‘Have to’ and ‘every other’ are both doing so much work here that I think your worldview on this is likely just incorrect.

The decisions to mobilize a large rural base toward manufacturing and the central bank goals to keep the yuan cheap as a critical support of this project were absolutely national.

They were ultimately about bringing (or trying to bring) one of the most populous nations in the world out of extreme poverty; in particular the people of the country out of extreme poverty.

There are different policies in place today, and, crucially, bleeding edge tech is not gainful labor employment —- BYD has some factories with roughly 2 employees per acre of robotic production, for instance. Or datacenters where the revenue could scale but the labor will not.

So, these are different times, different goals, different political and labor outcomes. Reasoning about what China “must do”, or has as a matter of “national policy” should start with a clear look at history and circumstance, or you’re likely to read things incorrectly.