I want to believe you can do better than that. No, it's Chinese quality that's laughable, and competition requires investments. Go take a look at the current level of foreign investment in China. Still laughing? They're not. They focused on the low end for decades assuming the high end would always be available. Now they're about 8-10 years behind outfits like Intel, who is still years behind TSMC.
My guesstimate has nothing to do with chauvinism, everything to do with their inability to design and manufacture middle and higher end CPUs, with an ancillary role played by Beijing's love of espionage and IP theft. We're not in 2013 anymore Toto.
TSMC is a foundry, and while they are the industry leader, they don't actually design any CPUs. There aren't that many countries with leadership in designing
CPUs. But your argument is that "Chinese quality" sucks because of one single product line?
If China sucks so bad at innovation, why did we have to ban them from buying ASML's most advanced lithography systems? Surely if their BEVs suck so badly, we don't need to tariff the hell out of them, right? Why did we ban Huawei from western CPUs if they can't compete in software anyway?
China is obviously still playing catch-up, but because we've taken an antagonistic posture against them (and arguably rightfully so), the CCP has decided they must become self-sufficient in key technology sectors going forward. And sadly, plenty of Nvidia's best GPUs were smuggled into China via intermediaries to fuel the AI boom.
China may never achieve parity with the U.S. as an economic superpower but give them enough time and we'll see how far they can go. The irony of "we're not in 2013 anymore" is that China has developed rapidly since the turn of the century. We're concerned about competition and fair play for valid reasons.
The other irony is that a lot of forum members here just don't want to "upgrade" to Windows 11. While Windows client hegemony isn't really at risk, this certainly cracks the door open for further gains for macOS* and even Linux. I have no opinion on HarmonyOS, but considering there are hundreds of millions of computers in China alone, that
could be a massive install base even if no other global market was interested.
* In select markets such as the U.S., macOS has done rather well after Tim Cook became CEO.