China was the beneficiary of decades of Soviet research into space as well, their early program flew Soyuz craft, their current craft maintain backwards compatibility if what is available is to be believed. They have a space station and put a rover on the Moon. So how is that an unfair comparison?
And how does using existing research take away from anything SpaceX has done? Sure NASA bought missions from them before they were sure that they could deliver, that sort of seed funding is not uncommon. Blue Origin benefited from a wealth of data in the DC-X project, also funded by NASA but its still remarkable what that they took Newshepard up and down from space four times.
I disagree that the Chinese started from scratch. From where I am sitting they started at the exact same place SpaceX did, using the research and know-how from a well funded and storied space organization to bootstrap their goals.
We can count it different ways. Besides having millenias long history of rocketry, China modern space program started with von Karman student:
So what? Nobody reinvents the wheel if they don't have to.
And I don't know why you think China started behind SpaceX. China benefited from US technical assistance in a way that SpaceX didn't.
I don't think it is fair to compare the SpaceX plan with China's (who have almost certainly had to acquire the expertise from a starting position far, far behind where SpaceX started).