Countries (or their leadership) can be good and bad at the same time, for different reasons.
China - Awful way of treating people, illusion of democracy, but at least they reign in huge companies.
US - Democracy but companies wield huge power. Doesn't seem to care about people's health much.
Many European countries - Huge focus on caring about public healthcare, companies under control but innovation stifled a lot of times
Same goes for basically every country, and it's important to be able to see the good and bad at the same time, to have a bit perspective. No country is 100% good, nor is any country 100% bad.
You make a good point, that is which institution has more legitimacy inside a de facto authoritarian state? The state itself and its authoritarian leaders? Or a private corporation that got so big as to "submerge" the state? (for the latter case think Samsung and South Korea, if South Korea had kept its 1970s-1980s state-policies).
No, let's all celebrate market competition, the most critical part of a functioning economy. Chinese companies aren't competitive due to CCP or authoritarian regime, but they're competitive because they're the underdogs on western markets and can't just curbstomp the competition with lawyers and DRM like US corporations can in their markets.
So they're forced to compete on price, quality and features (to some extent - it's not like they're not getting daddy Xis helping hand). Just like companies in other healthy capitalist markets which haven't completely broke due to consolidation.
PRC "progress" was a form of control. CCP basically handed everyone "rings of power" to rule over them. All their wealth is meant to be kept inside because that's control of the nation. Imagine if they didn't have currency controls, every rich person there would dump the Yuan for other currencies and overseas real estate. Meanwhile, all the inflated properties in the PRC will drop significantly. Unrest or instability is not good for CCP.
Which is all besides the point - the point is: you need market competition for capitalism to work. As soon as competition is broken, your economy starts stagnating and other incumbents start eating away at it.
> Chinese companies aren't competitive due to CCP or authoritarian regime, but they're competitive because they're the underdogs on western markets
China has been accused multiple times of assisting their companies with absurd amounts of government subsidies (leading to at least Europe and the US enacting counter tariffs), as well as using government and private industrial espionage and hacking campaigns to clone Western products.
Taking off my US citizen hat for a moment, this is a valid critique. Free trade, unencumbered by government subsidies, is mostly an illusion. The global system of government is anarchy, and the powerful nations hold the weaker nations to strict rules while they quietly seize any and all advantages.
