High-energy phsyics is only the visible tip of the iceberg here...one where they wish to broadcast their achievement (prospectively) and brag. Other areas where with great progress apparently are nano-technology, where they are more discreet and secretive in their successes...due to the strategic and military implications for reversing the playing field advantages we take for granted.
It is scary that China is able to accomplish so muc and such a smaller budget. Interesting that the U.S. isn't listed as a country that has built and experimented with a Tokomak reactor. Also intersting that the most powerful particle accelerator ever proposed, the superconducting supercollider, was scrapped by a democrat congress because the money to build it and it's physical location was in Republican districts. Why does Washigton want to do everything it can to make the U.S. lose her lead in science and technology. It's like slow erosion that no one wants to do anything about until the levee finally breaks.
(psssst: I didn't want to correct you in front of other Freepers so I'm whispering, but China is not the CCCP. That would be the former Soviet Union, the Union of Soviet Sociaist Republics. CCCP are in this case Cyrillic characters. To be honest I wouldn't recognize the Chinese characters for China if I saw them.)