Uh it's nice that SMIC is using 28nm in its Chengdu fab but this seems like an experimental prototype. If it had production yield then we would know. They would be advertising on their website and we would see big headlines in outlets like Nikkei Asia, SCMP or the Financial Times, not to mention the Global Times. It's easy to achieve certain things in laboratory conditions but in terms of an actual machine comparable to ASML's Twinscan 1980i, we probably won't see it until 2023-2025.
Not necessarily, there is quite a lot of movement in the Chinese semiconductor industry recently, but everything is kept under the radar to avoid attracting attention. Usually the progress is being published in low-profiles publications. SMEE launched a wide area lithography machine, which is quite significant because it is competing in the same area that Canon also wants to introduce itself, "Chiplets", to extend Moore's law. The announcement of this machine were published on their Chinese site but not in the English one. I think for the same reason of not attracting unwanted attention.
They probably have the machine already working but with this kind of machine is not like a commercial product that you produce yearly in mass like cars, this sophisticated machines have to pass a lot of validations by their primary costumers, in this case SMIC or others. Also this machines are going to be sold just to a few selected clients inside China with whom SMEE is collaborating, so even if they have the machine don't expect a big announcement until is certificated.
