Technically you're right, but typically the highest priority for a dictator is to extend their tenure, indefinitely if at all possible, by exercising those broad powers.
Making a foundational set of laws dictator-proof is actually a hard problem. It is kind of like designing a programming language that is deliberately Turing-incomplete. You're trying to make abusing the system impossible, without crippling the desired functionality.
IMO dictatorship / monarchy is a funny thing because after a certain scale the person at the top simply cannot be an absolutely power in the same way because there's too much going on. I think there more reasonable things to look at are:
- How many extra luxuries does then nominal ruler get, and do they "distract" from their power/responsibilities. (Perhaps there is even a strict luxery power trade off? not sure.)
- How is centralized is the bureaucracy, e.g. how many people outside the capital have power greater than those in the capital.
That said the way in which Pooh Bear uses the anticorruption law to silence and jail political rivals is definitely evidence of dictatorship.
2) Yes, but as with the agreements with my state (Victoria), those are fleeting and mostly gesture - the tide is turning against China since these wheels were set in motion several years ago
3) President for life? How isn't it a dictatorship? How is the leader replaced if the populace does not like him - and how do they make that known, when you can't even use an open communication platform like Clubhouse in China?