That sounds like you are moving the goalpost: winning through a narrow definition of "slowing down". Defining "slowing down" as "not having access to western semiconductor ecosystem or 2nm chips" instead of "can they build economically viable AI systems/phones that achieve user objectives satisfactorily, and at scale" does not help your country/bloc with any meaningful outcomes, and merely serves to score Internet points to feel good.
No, we have certainly slowed down their progress in AI with export controls on GPUs and upstream. China would have better AI models but for those export controls.
"Better" in what way? Ultra-large frontier model performance? China doesn't need that to achieve strategic objectives, like increased productivity and automation, advanced weaponry, advanced manufacturing, user adoption and deployment at scale.
You're narrowing your claim into something you can defend but is strategically hollow. Advanced weaponry, major productivity improvements, R&D speed etc — at the end of day, those are the things the US bloc actually want to slow down. Ultra-large foundational modals was just (incorrectly) seen as the only way to achieve those objectives.
It's like you're arguing that Chinese fighters are inferior to western stealth fighters. That's true when you compare plane-by-plane on paper. And yet the Chinese airfighting system-as-a-whole was still able to down Rafaels with high precision and without being retaliated on, as shown by the India-Pakistan standoff a while ago. What's the point of arguing "we've slowed China's aircraft engine development speed" when they're still shooting down western jets?
The Chinese definitely want their own frontier model. There is an enormous national effort behind building up the semiconductor manufacturing, data center infrastructure, and networking technologies required to compete with US frontier models. Because of the export controls, the semiconductor fab capacity required for the Chinese frontier models is at least 5x larger than the TSMC/Hynix capacity.
