alt Hacker News> "Get bankrolled by the state at the state's discretion until they get what they want, even if they need to burn $1B to get $1M of value"
If that's how it worked, they wouldn't lead in anything, they'd be bankrupt already. They burn state money like VCs burn cash. DeepSeek, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Huawei, etc., disprove your point.
Look into how their 5 year plans have lead to capital investment with almost zero feedback. A heavily bureaucratic system of bureaucrats incentivized to spend massively to boost their own appearance, and cover up losses/inefficiencies.
Ghost cities, empty high speed rail lines, solar cells being mass produced at a loss.
All these things also produced end products the state wanted, no doubt. But the capital allocation strategy is basically a "throw all the money the leader gives in that direction until the leader says stop".