This is a fair assessment. However, I think there is propaganda or self-delusion in the west that leads some people to believe that free markets and/or democracy are preconditions for any number of desirable outcomes like creativity, economic success, product innovation, etc. That may have empirically been true against the Eastern Bloc/Soviet Union during the cold war, but is not obvious to me regarding China today. AFAICT, China has produced companies that can go to to toe with the best in the west - occasionally winning outright[1]. We can argue whether that's because of subsidies, espionage, innovation or fundamental research

1. DJI, CATL, BYD, ByteDance, HighFlyer/DeepSeek