Correct. It doesn't have to be fake. It could be a very real breakthrough. Then the possibilities branch out. Taking the next step might require huge resources. Will the enemy take that on? If so, can you just watch and spy, saving your own resources to apply to other or more promising efforts?
Some people might think this is all just being too imaginative. But that is what the spooks are constantly doing, creating layer upon layer of misdirection and obfuscation. To wit, a sibling comment[1] about the Star Wars program.
I can't help but feel this amounts to: the chinese state might be doing something to futher some sort of geopolitical end, but we don't know what that end is or what the something that they are doing is.
And you're right, the chinese state probably has various plans to take advantage of whatever advantages they think will be good for their interests (just like every other country). But if we have no information or even plausible theories, what good is this baseless speculation? Its not exactly news that China is a rising super power and probably has schemes within schemes. Maybe this one is the obvious one, that a working quantum computer would be very prestigious and economically valuable to the first country to get there. Or maybe not. But if it isn't the obvious one, guessing at utter random without even reading up on the underlying paper almost certainly will not come up with whatever the scheme is.
Whether the comment was incorrect in this case related to the paper in question doesn't invalidate the strategy, generally. Might be easier to pass scientific misinfo/disinfo if it were more difficult to reproduce, of course.
The comment was likely done in haste, meant to convey general strat that warrants consideration when examining the paper -- but could be easily invalidated, as you pointed out.
Spend some aws credits and verify the results of the paper for higher and higher numbers, if you don't believe it.
I'm not saying china can't be evil, but faking a breakthrough that can be verified (to a certain level) is a next level stupid way of being evil.