Unfortunately, China has gone into hiding pretty much everything until it's completely ready. Look at Huawei's Kirin 9000s chip. It's being produced in massive numbers meaning that SMIC has a pretty good yield rate. That didn't happen overnight. SMIC must have been working on it's yield with Huawei until they were absolutely sure they could mass produce it even with new sanctions.What is going on with SMEE releasing DUV litho Machine by 2023? Any update on that? Or are they delayed?
So whatever SMEE is doing, we're not going to hear about it until it's already in production lines and pushing out chips. This is so the US has no way of knowing or predicting what to try to do next. If everything you do is already mass production levels, then all the US can do is try to figure out what to do after the fact. If you announce things before they're at that level, the US can try to do things to hurt you.
So, unfortunately, China has necessarily gone into hiding what they do. We won't be sure until they're already in mass production. But I would take heart. If China says they're getting ready for SMEE mass production at the end of the year, which they did, we will likely see it go into mass production at the end of the year if not early 2024.