[vwoolf]

what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s

I am late to this discussion, but James Fallows wrote China Airborn, a book about precisely this topic! The answer is complicated—if it weren't, he'd not bother writing a whole book about it—but the short answer is that so far China's not succeeded.

China does lots of stuff well and deserves credit for it but is not the indomitable powerhouse sometimes suggested in the media (e.g. http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-m..., although I don't know if this piece or others like it are for real).