The OP is trying to summarize a 1.4Bn country failure to achieve jet engine in: if you do these couple tricks; or because of these two things.

If you're a small country, sure, that kind of strategy might make sense. Pick your battles, run the country like a startup (i.e. bet on one or two industries). China's strategy is the opposite of that: just make production costs low across the board (transport, energy, housing, etc.) and let everything else follow. With 1.4 billion people, something somewhere is bound to pop off.

People are reading way too much into the 5-year plans. It basically boils down to "do science across the board, but lean a bit more into these areas."