They are acquiring parts to reverse engineer them and build their own

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

	▲	ux266478 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.