OK, thanks - all great points.

This is a lot more info, not directly related to the conversation, but directly affects what is happening in tech and the rest of China's economy, and why their tech may still fail.

One thing I'm reading about, which is related, is that China's population is about to crash, and crash big time. It is all over the world, but particularly going to hit China hard because of the one child policy and they are still not a first world country.

In 2018, birth rates dropped 12% to 15.2 million, with some provinces droping by 35%. Yi Fuxian, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has written that China’s government has obscured the actual fertility rate to disguise the disastrous ramifications of the “one child” policy. According to his calculations, the fertility rate averaged 1.18 between 2010 and 2018. Replacement is 2.1 child per couple.

Fewer children were born, and because of cultural preferences for male offspring, fewer of them were girls.

There are 122 boys for every 100 girls born, so this is an issue - not all men will find a mate and competition for women will be intense. 1 in 5 men won't find a mate, at all. 34 million frustrated men. I've read before that this is one of the main contributors that nations go to war - for single men to get women, if there is a great inbalance. It would certainly make the wifeless men very angry and ready for war, and motivated. The male/female birth imbalance has already fueled human trafficing and child kidnapping.

Chinese women born during the years following the “one child” policy are now reaching or have already passed their peak fertility age. There are simply not enough of them to sustain the country’s population level. The declining population will create an even greater burden on China’s economy and its labor force. With fewer workers in the future, the government could struggle to pay for a population that is growing older and living longer.

Additionally, much of China's population have put their wealth into property based on the greater fool principle. This has resulted in entire ghost cities being built, with nobody living in them, and the apartment buildings are half-done (no one can live there even if they wanted to), and with the population collapsing, property value will precipitously drop, and soon. The value of chinese real estate is $52 trillion, twice the USA's, and greater than the USA's entire bond market. This reminds me when an acre in Tokyo in 1980 was worth more than the entire state of California's real estate - it's just crazy on principle. In China, 78% of wealth is in property, compared to 35% in the USA. 44% of homes are 2nd homes, 25 are 3rd homes. 30% of home sales are for people to actually live in. China's upcoming crash will make USA's 2008 crash look like a fender bender.

A study published in The Lancet forecasts after hitting a maximum population of 1.4 billion, China will lose nearly half its population by the end of the century, no matter what they do. It's too late.

The People’s Bank of China warned China had only about a decade left to enjoy the benefits of its large working-age population, which has helped propel growth over the past four decades,”

All retirement in China is unfunded. The children might support 2 sets of parents - his and hers, and 8 grandparents in their home, and can't split up between kids - 1 child policy. The working population is getting very resentful. The goverment wants this generation to work the 996 schedule [9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week]. This is why the "Lie flat" movement is spreading in China, and leadership is upset by it.

Adding to this, desertion (not desertification) of rural areas are so severe that agriculture is not happening and Xi Jinping as admitted that China can't feed itself anymore. Scarier: the full effects of climate change are yet to be felt in full force.

With the war talk, and everything else, companies are pouring out of China, so China's income is going to take a hit. And rising employee wages means that China is pricing itself out of the market against new low cost suppliers.

While you say that they can do it inhouse, they still need to have buyers. And the buyers are the first world, who has all the money. With China being belligerent, is the West going to purchase from them, or will we comletely boycot them to starve their incipient industry? Or will they be good only with internal customers? I don't know.

Will China be able to create an advanced semiconductor industry? Who knows. Only the future will eventually tell the tale.