>Those are typically very low margin business. It's unlikely the EU could have competed with China because of labour costs/rights.

Well, you can apply this logic to a lot of other industries, like cars for example, they're also quite low margin products now when you ignore the stealership price gouging and artificail protectionism. The problem is if you just let all your manufacturing industry die out of greed and ship it aboard to cheaper labor, you're leaving yourself exposed to geopolitical rivals or even to allies who decide not be your allies anymore because they know they got you by the balls now and can squeeze concessions out of you. <flashbacks of EU's energy ties with Russia>

Then what do you do?

China is willing to play and loose the short game in order to win the long game, while EU is only focused on the short term gains while it's been slowly bleeding leverage and influence to rivals in critical sectors that you can't easily reshore back on a whim in case of another once-in-a-lifetime pandemic or "special military operation".

China's EV success didn't come out of nowhere, it just leveraged all the low margin electronics industry the west didn't want anymore and shipped to CHina, and look at their EV industry versus the EU one today.

Same with Taiwan's success in the semi industry. They started by manufacturing on the cheap dated processes acquired from Philips and RCA, and look at TSMC now.

We're not talking about outsourcing manufacturing of cheap clothes and sneakers here. DRAM, NAND and micro-electronics in general is quite an indispensable part of or modern civilisation and defense now, even without the AI bubble. The longer you ignore your domestic capabilities because the profits aren't as high as you want, the harder it's gonna bite you in the ass later when the shit hits the fan.

If we want to invest in independence then that's fine - let's not confuse it with nurturing a successful business.

I felt OP was suggesting that a European manufacturer would have flourished if properly supported by a visionary government, and I think that argument is mistaken.

You are arguing that globalised supply chains are risky, which is something I can agree with. If europe protects its DRAM manufacturer it is going to be less reliant on China but we should not confuse that with the European company flourishing. It seems likely such protection would be an expensive venture which absent any global conflict would produce more expensive products and make a loss while doing so.