@european_guy good day bro, before the Sinophobia there is in the 80's and 90's the Japanese scaremongering as Japan dominated the Semiconductor field with the likes of Canon and Nikon. To counter the US and the European form a consortium SEMATECH partly funded by DARPA to produced an EUVL. Japan was excluded BUT they had the material needed cause the major FABS like TSMC, Intel and others are their customers. Now with ASML introducing an improve iteration "HIGH NA" EUVL maybe this breakthrough are meant for it.
Gigaphoton has offices in China and they're doing well. From a business perspective IF they want to retain their market share, they have to go local by creating a Chinese subsidiary, that is the only way to survive. Right now there is an opportunity why not grab it, what is the point of creating a 250W LPP without a customer, Japan don't have an EUVL and ASML is a monopoly and they have Cymer.
Aside from forming a local subsidiary why not talk with ASML since Cymer is an American subsidiary, why not have JV for the Chinese market by pairing ASML NXT 3400 with Gigaphoton 250W LPP, win win. BUT It wouldn't happen cause ASML had this condescending attitude being a monopolist.
I think the Chinese mentality being a merchantile race, respect and goodwill is part of doing business and sometimes Westerner misconstrued it as being obedient. As you said Japan rely heavily on the US and IF a customer ask you to do something you comply, BUT who is the bigger customer and the Japanese had to ask that question among themselves, cause the American hate their guts as memories of Pearl Harbor is still not forgotten.
