1. Apparently China can now make the balls for ballpoint pens (a metallurgical milestone, supposedly?): https://www.businessinsider.com/china-has-finally-figure

1. Apparently China can now make the balls for ballpoint pens (a metallurgical milestone, supposedly?): https://www.businessinsider.com/china-has-finally-figured-out-how-to-make-ballpoint-pens-2017-1?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/china-has-finally-figured-ou... 2. Fab process tech is pretty firmly in Dutch/Swiss/Japanese hands I think? In terms of fabs, SMIC is planning to start 7nm process this year, so about 3 years behind: https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/chinese-fab-smic-to-start-7nm-production-in-the-fourth-quarter-report https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/chinese-fab-smic-to-sta... 3. Anecdotally I visited an optics tradeshow in Shenzhen and it was pretty impressive what was available in advanced lenses for process control. But I'm no expert. Consumer camera lenses from China have been getting better and better. 4. It's not really hard to make mechanical watches if you have great CNC machines. Which are still dominated by Switzerland (Tornos), Germany (Kern), Japan (many, including Tsugami). Seagull have been making decent mechanical watches for >60 years... 5. China is pushing heavily on gene therapy which may turn out to be a big part of future medicine