What on earth would the "average" developer's knowledge and skills in cyber security have anything to do with it? I believe there are enormous quantities of brilliant and well educated people in every major country. China certainly doesn't lack them, nor does the US, Russia, India, Germany, Brazil,m etc.
If you read the CVE description linked you'll notice some details focused on the actual specific product, I have a hard time believing random hackers trying to build a botnet would search out critical infrastructure and burn expensive 0-days for small amounts of compute.
> What on earth would the "average" developer's knowledge and skills in cyber security have anything to do with it?
I may be wrong, but I think the development of an "industry" would depend on the foundation of related education and its popularity in the population. Like if football is not taught in the school and people generally don't play it in a country, it's unlikely to have a team to win in olympics even if the government wants it.
The previous commenter is right. This is related to espionnage and warfare, which every major power (China included) invests in. I believe China values education and sovereignty.
If you read the CVE description linked you'll notice some details focused on the actual specific product, I have a hard time believing random hackers trying to build a botnet would search out critical infrastructure and burn expensive 0-days for small amounts of compute.