Only government picking winners can succeed when incumbant leader is generations ahead in sector with generations of knowledge mote and 100s of billions of hist

Only government picking winners can succeed when incumbant leader is generations ahead in sector with generations of knowledge mote and 100s of billions of historic investment, a big % of which was also industrial policy. The alternative to gov effort is nothing. Which is better than nothing and no waste (not trying), but worse than something an waste. But real question is, when has PRC government industrial policy failed? Essentially never. Especially under pressure. They're inefficient sure, miss deadlines, but overall they have either delivered and caught up on almost every strategic sector of interest, except leading edge semiconductors. They even caught up on turbo jet engines within last few years, it's within single generation of performance, behind on reliability (hence operating costs). Which makes commercialization an issue, but that's hardly factor when alternative is nothing. EUV being "hard" is to be quanitified. Despite narratives to liken EUV to black magic, it wasn't an Manhattan project effort. Before first commercial EUV system was released ASML had ~10k employees, Zeiss SMT had ~3k, Cymer had ~1k. EUV developed without any pressing strategic urgency for 20 years. It wasn't a massive commercial/strategic undertaking. For reference, Boeing/Lockheed/Airbus had like 100-150k in 2010s. Also PRC growing at modest 5% vs previous 8-10% with RE speculation. 5% because without excess RE, PRC still has many easy growth drivers for recession. and RE is hardly an exitential crisis that affects development in other sectors. Only idiots thinks PRC economy is just a giant RE ponzi scheme and nothing else. US S&T growing throughout GFC too. There's plenty of money and more importantly, finally talent, to go around. And economically it's dumb to not dumb stupid money in semi, when it's PRC's largest import by value. Indigenous semi will save trillions from going to western pockets/western strategic industries. Simply not paying western IP fees / rent pushes inefficient PRC semi processes to be into commercial viablity. It pays for itself.