> My guess right now is that China will never catch up because [..]

The problem China is big enough to catch up just by it depending on itself + some cheap mass consumer market outlets to even further scale production.

Like they have 1408 Million people ~3times the US and their education system tries (at least of paper) to give everyone a chance to reach silence excellence iff (and only iff) they are noticeable above average (but also due to the form of their education system for people which certain kinds of approaches to thinking which is a major handicap they gave themself accidentally). Like either way with that population size, priority on catching up on chip production, willingness to steal science (through it's not like the US doesn't have a habit for that, too) it's just a matter of time until they have some truly genius people put into the right kind of position with the right kind of resources which will close the gap step by step.