Actually there are very few people whining here although you're absolutely right. It's so tiring to hear that. China isn't whining. It's been working on it since the early 2000s and still quietly marching on and reacting. China probably never thought it would take the US this long to stop their own gravy train and eat some bitter medicine (in the interests of the US empire... contrary to China). These cards are the American's to play and they have.
You're right in that China should have scaled up domestic fab production sooner but you forget that everyone then needed the best and latest to be competitive. Domestic fab didn't offer as good as TAiwanese fab. Ergo domestic fab lines were rather limited. But did you notice that they exist? They're not too bad. If the US and Taiwan are on 6th gen fighters... China's own is a 4.5 gen and soon will have 5th gen as a certainty. The rest are either 0 gen or at best 1st gen. That's bloody good and could only have come about WITH corporate and government leadership understanding the strategic game and outplaying the US.
Also we are suspecting domestic fab lines are delivery low production rates for now but this is the minimum. Leaderships could also refrained from devoting money and resources at scaling them up when access was still full. They may have known it is relatively quick and easy to scale it up if the US bans and it makes no sense to mass produce your 4.5 gen when the other guy is on 6th gen. It would make better sense to put those resources into your own 5th gen when it is ready or if 4.5 is all you have but you need it now. Either way, I don't think that's a blunder at all - keeping domestic fab and foundries alive but not putting stock into them until the right time.
Fact Chinese modern foundries do exist. Fact...modern foundries are rarer than nuclear weapons and experimental fusion reactors. I'd say China's done as optimally as it could have and shows this was only possible with authoritarian determination. A purely capitalistic market/industry would have not built a single foundry based on domestic tech. India has like one for military applications using almost only foreign equipment from the 1990s era to the 2000s era, producing >100nm node chips as their absolute latest capability and advancing at a far slower rate. Why? 1. because it has less market and national incentive. 2. no government determination until recently with $1B offer to foreign company... Not a single one even looked at it. If they upped it to $50B maybe lol. Then there'd be many people trying for angles rather than genuine intention.
So China not only having foundries of relatively modern capability but also foundries that are using entirely Chinese equipment that China can make itself, that's enough to show they didn't drop the ball.
