Mainland China still struggles with ultra-high precision engineering to this day. They still can’t make a turbofan engine that matches the efficiency and power/weight ratio of either Russian or Western designs, despite the fact that many of their “indigenous” designs are simply reverse-engineered copies. Hell, they only recently started successfully mass-producing good-quality ballpoint pens (which are actually deceptively difficult to manufacture at scale).

Edit: Not to mention, trying to capture and use at least some of Taiwan’s semiconductor foundries is very definitely one of the unstated justifications they have for claiming sovereignty over Taiwan, and for making plans to invade and fully subjugate the island.

Considering that the CCP seems to lean HARD into the Soviet idea of saving face at all costs just to try to look good, I would not be terribly surprised if some sort of Chernobyl- thing happens at some point, because that’s the exact mentality that led to Chernobyl and the RBMK reactor design becoming a problem in the first place.