+ industrial espionage to be able to reverse engineer it at all.

If someone likes you, trade secrets flow like wine. That's basic humanity. It's not unique to China, though the relationships involved are a little bit different. It's not a bad thing either, we all live in the same society.

> setting a goal of producing working chips on the prototype by 2028

They might be, but if they plan on getting a factory running in 3 years, they're presumably planning on using what they purchased.