It's not that those models are wrong, it's that it's a very different thing to read about 20 years of traumatic events from the pages of books on economics, vs. having to live through it.
But the upside is how much lives of Chinese have improved, so they got that going for them, which is nice.
My critic is towards stating that automation (robots, ai, etc.) causes a loss of jobs in absolute terms, as if in the future most of the people will be unemployed.
There's a radical difference between stating that changes (loss and creation at the same time) in the jobs market will cause disruption, and stating that jobs will be lost and that's it.
Thinking the (r)evolution in nihilistic terms will distract from improving the problems typically caused by the market change (which is the one you mentioned).