Unfortunately for the Chinese it's extremely tricky for even private capital to pick the winners in these spaces. I'd guess there is almost zero chance the Chinese government giving out free cash beat the market and even build the right stuff. Can they even build the light sources or optics for these devices. Don't Zeiss make the flattest mirrors ever made for this? There's probably hundreds of technologies that are as close to magic as you can get in the ASML lithography systems, I'm skeptical of even companies in the US being able to copy this for a long time.
By the time the Chinese catch up (if ever) the next generation of chip development will be coming online such as High NA and we are even starting to experiment with XRay lithography.
They have already proved time and time again to be able to make gigantic leaps, some of those, completely on their own in the sector.
Pouring billions in the sector highly increases the chances of breakthrough technologies.
I personally think more competition in the space is good for everyone, albeit I'm not a fan of those trade wars, they accomplish little at the end of the day and they are funded with a lot of our taxes, we talking hundreds of euros/dollars per citizen for many years to subsidize this trade war we have little to gain from.
China will still get ASML equipment eventually if they will really want to by buying it from intermediate sources that may hide the operation for the right amount of $. China will be further motivated to reverse engineer the solutions and not share their own advancements in the sector if accomplished.
>>They have already proved time and time again to be able to make gigantic leaps, some of those, completely on their own in the sector.
Yes, we shall see. An awful lot of those giant leaps were extremely dependent on technology that was either systematically forced to hand over from democratic countries, or outright stolen by espionage (see their fighter jet vs F35, and some sub technologies).
Have the Chinese managed to reach critical mass of knowledge to continue to advance? Time will tell. But, if Russia is an indicator, even leadership in some areas will slow, stagnate, then become dependent on outside sources [0]. Notice also that Russia is dependent on outside sources even for CNC machines, in which it used to lead, with China's exports increasing 10X after Ukraine invasion [1].
> Yes, we shall see. An awful lot of those giant leaps were extremely dependent on technology that was either systematically forced to hand over from democratic countries, or outright stolen by espionage (see their fighter jet vs F35, and some sub technologies).
Here we go again. A little bit of reading here[0] and here[1].
Nonsense. No one denies your list of pages of Chinese inventions from prehistoric, ancient and imperial periods. No one is saying that the Chinese are some kind of inferior race or incapable of invention.
The present question is what can their society do NOW? Especially considering 1) Mao murdered & starved millions, w/strong emphasis on killing of "elites" and "educated" people in the "Great Leap Forward", which impairs their technological ability 2) China suffer a lot from brain drain to the west, and 3) they are an authoritarian society which has some inherent advantages (e.g., they can put a massive budget on Project X within days, and they can provide consistent funding over decades, vs the constant sea-saw we get in congress so NASA, NSF, etc. don't know their budget from one year to the next) and many disadvantages inherent in authoritarianism.
With those factors, and the current state of their economy, can they go it alone and maintain their aggressive expansionist policies?
Ok. You went from industrial espionage to authoritarianism, killing, society, etc.
I was purely answering to your issue with Chinese industrial espionage. You only mentioned their inventions and simply ignored the other link which shows Chinese are no different than others in terms of industrial espionage and stealing.
No different? Indeed, other societies have used industrial espionage and stealing in the past. But the Chinese have refined, funded, systematized, and integrated it into their development far more extensively than any other society, even the Russians, whose entire approach to silicon microchip development was to steal it and build a 'factory town' to develop based on the theft [0]; didn't work out so well.
One could say that the Chinese are world-champion innovators in the area of industrial espionage, both in the effort they put into it and the results.
The question is: now that this source of knowledge is being restricted, have they reached a point where they can 'reach escape velocity' mostly on their own?
I think it is an open question. I hope not, because that will mean effectively another 'end of history'[1], except with authoritarian states dominating.
Okay only time will tell. Which technologies has Chinese capital (rather than American capital) been successful at funding, I think display technology and solar panels they are ahead on, anything else?
By the time the Chinese catch up (if ever) the next generation of chip development will be coming online such as High NA and we are even starting to experiment with XRay lithography.