There are five year plans. The 14th Five Year Plan is just finishing up, and the 15th Five Year Plan is in final discussions, with formal approval in October.
Comments from outside China indicate that about 80% of the goals of the 14th plan were achieved. High speed rail, energy, electric cars, mechanization of agriculture, and consumer goods worked out very well. There was overbuilding and a crash in housing and commercial construction.
Areas of technical trouble are jetliners and high end semiconductors. That's about what was expected. The five year plans have been ambitious but realistic in recent decades. Up until the 1990s, they were totally unrealistic. Famines resulted.
These plans mostly drive capital allocation. It's not like the USSR's GOSPLAN, which actually set production quotas for factories. That worked badly, especially with a one-year update cycle.
I don’t think you actually disagree with the person you replied to. The point of saying China isn’t a centrally planned economy wasn’t to say there is no central planning at all, but that it’s invalid to conclude that the level of planning China does do condemns it to failure.
These plans mostly drive capital allocation. It's not like the USSR's GOSPLAN, which actually set production quotas for factories. That worked badly, especially with a one-year update cycle.