The power consumption and performance difference between 7nm and 2nm is basically not worth it due to the increased design cost, except in the case of smartphones. One promising field is the use of graphene wafers which has potential performance attributes supposedly up to 10 times higher than silicon on the same process. I don't know how much of that is hype, but it's something China should be doing more research on during the catch up stage.The EDA situation may be similar to semiconductor lithography: TSMC is now ahead of China's fabs, but how much further can the Taiwanese firm go? Perhaps to 3 nm, maybe to 2 nm, and then what? They will likely be stuck, and that would allow the Chinese fabs to catch up.