[ArchD]

Maybe they can develop their own high-tech fabrication technology to catch up, but I wonder how they will manage and accelerate the progress.

The West has IP laws to incentivise R&D by the free market. In China, IP law enforcement is hit-and-miss. Small entities risk having their research getting used by others for free so it would be up to big entities that are well-connected to the centers of power to do the R&D. Research done by a few big entities in a centralized manner may not foster much innovation.

So maybe it boils down to how well they can spy or poach talent or knowledgeable people from Western companies, or maybe reverse-engineer Western products.

[FooBarWidget]

This is less and less the case. IP protection in China has been improving for years.

[andsoitis]

> This is less and less the case. IP protection in China has been improving for years.

Not only are there persistent allegations of state-organized economic espionage and theft of intellectual property in violation of international trade agreements, it is not just limited to business. Academia and government also.

Chinese firms have been able to spend more on production, undercutting competitors, by skipping costly R&D because of IP theft.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_intellectual_pr...

In July, the OECD halted publication of China's science statistics citing "anomalies". Source: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/international-news/puzzle-s...

These anomalous statistics give us a small and partial peek into how much China claims to be spending on R&D vs. actual. There could be multiple interpretations of the anomalous R&D statistics, but it would be consistent with the allegations that China's explicit strategy is to steal IP to bolster local companies so that they can compete on the global scale.