The chinese room thought experiment is more like Searle's attempt to get you on board with his intuitions about the philosophy of mind - but taken on its own as an argument it's pretty unsound.

His real argument exists in a bunch of stuff he wrote about intentionality (the real argument probably still fails - but it's more nuanced than the Chinese room stuff everyone talks about).

If you want a really good paper about the problems around machines and minds check out "Troubles with Functionalism" by Ned Block