Exactly, we see that western companies managed to go through these 3 generations in a few years, and there's no reason to expect that it's going to take China longer. If anything, I'm expecting China will be able to do it faster because the techniques for doing this are now known, and Chinese researchers know which approaches to pursue. Furthermore, nothing stops China from just hiring the researchers that were involved in developing western chips.

And yeah, the fact that China managed to create this whole industry domestically effectively overnight is incredibly impressive.

By putting these sanctions on China, the US may have created the only country on earth that has complete vertical integration of chip manufacturing.

I bet sanctions were the first step and I expect sabotage will soon start if it hasn't already

and to go from absolutely nothing 2 years ago to only 2 or 3 years behind the state of the art is huge.

It would have been described as impossible by most western "experts" barely months ago

Hell, some of them are still coping and saying it is impossible