This is technically true. China currently only has DUV machines, which don’t have enough resolution to produce 5nm chips directly. Only more advanced EUV machines are able to produce this directly or in one-two patterning steps.
However, China can still produce 5nm chips via multiple patterning. Basically, by overlaying lower resolution patterns offset from one another, you can form higher resolution structures in between the lower-res patterns. By repeating the multi-patterning process, you can “technically” get infinitely small resolutions.
The drawback is that you have to use several more steps. Each step takes more time, reducing throughout, and is a possible area for error. As a result, multi-patterned yields are lower than directly produced yields, and are more expensive as a result.
Thus, the real benefit going from DUV to EUV is reduced costs and increased throughput. Until China gets EUV, multi-patterned DUV is sufficient, since the state is willing to accept higher costs of production and provide subsidies to chipmakers in exchange for self-reliance.
The stumbling block right now is that the tech jump from DUV to EUV is large. DUV (deep ultraviolet light), which has a wavelength around 250nm, can be produced directly via lasers.
On the other hand, EUV (extreme ultraviolet light), which has a wavelength of 13.5nm and is almost an X-ray, cannot currently be produced directly right now. Current machines make it by using a giant laser to zap a molten drop of tin, turning it into a plasma which emits the desired EUV light. In the process, only ~6% of the original laser power is converted to EUV, resulting in an output of around 350 watts.
All in all, it took ~20 years to master this convoluted process. It will take China time to develop this EUV production tech, probably around 5-10 years at most.
In the process, China might be able to leapfrog some lingering issues with the tech. For example, the dogshit conversion efficiency means that a ridiculously large starting laser is needed to produce a paltry amount of EUV light, with the process output capping out around 500 watts.
Instead, China is starting work on oscillating electrons in a particle accelerator to generate EUV light directly, with much higher power output, called steady-state micro-bunching (SSMB). Using SSMB, China can use one accelerator to power dozens of EUV machines, and can scale output to be superior than current EUV machines. China is beginning work on a facility dedicated to SSMB research in Xiong’an this year.
For more info on this stuff, see:
This pivot against FOSS in the West will just hurt themselves. The strength of FOSS is its huge potential for reach, while its drawback is that it’s harder for FOSS devs to make a living.
In the West, FOSS devs all live on donations. While a few FOSS programs become huge enough to sustain themselves, most fail. Western governments have deliberate policies of not finding much FOSS development, exacerbating this issue.
Socialist countries’ (e.g. China’s) policies of government investment in development invariably leads to more investment in FOSS, providing FOSS developers more stable incomes. For example, China has multiple government-funded Linux OSes (UOS, Kylin, Deepin), OpenHarmony OS, etc.
This will ultimately snowball into more and more FOSS programs, creating a vibrant socialist-developed software ecosystem the developing world can quickly plug into at low-cost.