😂 free market? What in the world? China is the LAST thing from a free market. They banned bitcoin! They banned Amazon and other American tech platforms from gaining a stranglehold on the Chinese IT sector. They always pick and choose what companies can do business within their borders.

They became the manufacturing powerhouse because the west exported the labor to China where the CCP is the only union in town in the pursuit to maximize shareholder profits by driving the cost of labor to zero. This is why China rose to a power. The west allowed it.