SMIC head recently said the roadblock was talent not hardware or sanctions, implying obstacles like ASML EUV is surmountable. I'm not expert enough to judge, but China is graduating an Taiwan's worth of semi specialists every 15 months while poaching whoever they can, stealing whatever they can to catch up. The various anecdotes / sentiment from industry experts do not seem super doom and gloom. There's get tons of frank appraisals from Chinese analysts about how _massive_ the military gap between Chinese and US is in specific domains, but so far Chinese semi success seems to be like forgone conclusion. Kind of like ballpoint pen situation, which ppl misconstrue as lol China only learned to make ball point pen recently, when really it was Premier LiKeqiang politicized importance of precision manufacturing for national security, and 2 years later Chinese industry figured out how work with tungsten carbide for advanced munitions. But here's a cute ballpoint pen article to distract laowais.