Slaves are property. For all the many, many awful things that are wrong in China there is no slavery.

Minimum wage laws are not economically binding in less developed countries except sometimes for the professional managerial class. They sure as hell aren’t binding in Communist countries like China or Vietnam. You need a strong and powerful state to enforce minimum wage laws. If you can’t manage to vaccinate all the children in your country the laws may be on the books but they won’t be followed.

Serfdom was abolished in 1861, so no the USSR did not go from serfdom to the space race.

But that's an aside, the point is that exploitative labour practices come about because of what @netsharc says. You've sidestepped his and my point.

If it was you or your children in a sweatshop you mightn't be so gung-ho.

Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production. It often goes hand-in-hand with free markets, but they're not the same thing.

As an example, interest rate fixing by central banks in DM countries is anathema to free markets and price discovery; yet ownership of production is privatized.

Just let these definitional arguments go, they’re not interesting or valuable.

As a general principle agree your definitions before you lock horns and you'll start getting somewhere, if no further than agreeing to disagree.