Unfortunately, that is not how technology works. Having a "rough" knowledge of what someone has done does not meaningfully help you create a 180 ton machine with 5,000 suppliers and mirrors ground so precisely that, if scaled to the size of Germany, they would have no bumps bigger than a millimeter.
EUV was theoretically proven in 1998. It took them 20 more years to practically develop it. There is no reason to think China would take less time. If anything, China may take even longer because it does not have all the supplier industries that ASML had access to during the 2000s and 2010s. Many of those industries don't even exist in China or are just getting started at a primitive state. If China develops an EUV machine by 2040 I will be impressed.
Maybe if China had maintained good relations with the West, bidden its time and hidden its strength a bit longer, it could have imported an EUV machine from the Netherlands, and then it would have been able to disassemble it and study it, and gain some clues. (Although even that would have cost it $250 million and give itself away). But it cannot even do that now.
The global consumer electronics market was $1.2 trillion in 2017.
The China consumer electronics market was $247 billion in 2020.
Most of the world market is OUTSIDE China. Therefore, that is where the battle is going to be. If China fails to gain a bigger share of the overall world market than the West, it will have a smaller market. That means less revenue for R&D.
Regarding the WJ-6 engine that powers the AG600, it is a copy license of the Russian Ivchenko AI-20 engine developed in the 1950s. Even for 1950s technology China still copies Russia. China has been importing from Russia for 70 years. When China no longer needs to import military equipment from Russia, then I will start to pay attention when keyboard Chinese nationalists start beating their chests and boasting about "having more R&D than the entire developed world." This is like talking about acing the PhD dissertation defense when you have not even graduated from middle school yet. Graduate from middle school first, then we can talk about University.
Regarding China's RMB currency exchange rate appreciation to get you the GDP statistics you want:
There is no evidence that the RMB is appreciating against the dollar.
During the Deng Xiaoping era the RMB became internationally exchanged in a meaningful way for the first time. Great success!
During the Jiang Zemin era the RMB was stable at 8.3 per dollar which was good for economic and business planning and predictability. When the Asian financial crisis happened and Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, even Japan devalued their currency, China held firm at 8.3. This gained China great credibility in Asia. When there was a speculative attack on the Hong Kong dollar, China beat it back. Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji were masters. Great success!
During the Hu Jintao era the RMB appreciated from 8.3 to 6.3, reflecting China's growth and making foreign imports cheaper for Chinese while allowing Chinese yuan to buy more abroad. Great success!
But during the Xi Jinping era, when he has made a hardline turn and started fighting with everyone, the RMB has lost value. Ten years ago its value was 6.3 to the dollar, whereas today it is 7 to the dollar. There is currently nothing in the market to indicate the RMB will appreciate. If anything it will go down even further as China gets into more fights with more countries and makes more and more enemies.
Regarding the current US recession, it is thanks to the pandemic which has people staying home. But the US savings rate, which was 0% 15 years ago, has now surged to 19%. When the pandemic is over all that pent up consumer demand will come out and stimulate the US economy, and as people go out the economy will return to its normal trajectory. There is no permanent damage to the US economy. If anything, the pandemic has accelerated the US economy's transition to e-commerce, remote work, and technology. Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have all reported buffo earnings and profits.
