Although I am pretty pro-China, I wonder if the PPP adjustment would be weaker for higher end research considering that the mix of western to domestic equipment ratio is still quite high and this article is in reality, a veiled "China threat article", and China still has a gap to catch up to or is just roughly equal and should not be lulled into a false sense of superiority.
Doubt it. One of the assaults on higher education by Trump was a mandate to limit the proportion of indirect cost for NIH grants to 15%, which is a drastic decrease from the typical indirect cost spending of 50-60% for higher level STEM research. That's cost for things like electricity, administrative, security, janitorial, non-research specific equipment (e.g. AC, safety, etc.) and such. These should all be much lower in China.