I do not think China ever prioritized home grown semis, since its viewed as "plumbing" for more lucrative things built on top of chips ( software, etc).

Why focus on it when South Korea, Taiwan was already doing it ?

As the article states, it's a 500 billion dollar industry.

Compared to energy, defense it's much less important ( but critical ).

Now that the US is threatening to shut them off, they are being forced to invest more heavily.

I saw a graph the other day, within 2030 or something, china was poised to hold a monopsony position in semis, something like 80% of global semi consumption is going to come from China.

It's just surprising that the US would kick their biggest semiconductor customer in the head.