If you read through the links in the submission, Mr. AC, you get to these quotes (two links down at https://phys.org/news/2019-04-...:
"EAST (the Chinese tokamak) is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which seeks to prove the feasibility of fusion power.
Funded and run by the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United States, the multi-billion-dollar project's centrepiece will be a giant cylindrical fusion device, called a tokamak."
and
"Wu Songtao, a top Chinese engineer with ITER, conceded that China's technical capabilities on fusion still lag behind more developed countries, and that US and Japanese tokamaks have achieved more valuable overall results."
I don't know why every time the Chinese do something cool it spawns all the uninformed remarks that the USA or Europe can't or won't or gave up on something similar. It's like reverse jingoism. In this case (controlled fusion) China is a valuable member of the research team, like all the other participants. Seems win-win-win to me.