I think this kind of news, along with investments in cybersecurity, are the kind that get don't get much attention. It's to our (the west, who want to compete) own detriment because it's something you can look back on much later and say "Oh, the signs were there all along". At least that's what happened with cybersecurity; our infrastructure now comes under attack on an increasingly regular basis, and there isn't enough money or willpower to fix things. I can see similar parallels with supercomputing.