Show us an empire that gained wealth and power without the crucial role of the government being central to its success?

SILENCE.

Governments are crucial to the wealth of nations and always have been.

The Chinese government regulates and controls big capital deliberately and particularly where it seeks to rentseek or manipulate the market at the expense of the wider economy - this used to also be the case in western liberal democracies at least until the neoliberals captured our governments via patronage.

The western governments and economies are today corrupted, directed by big capital. (AKA crony capitalism) This is where your Libertarian/neoliberal (market knows best) dogma/narrative gets us to- economic and societal ruin and inability to compete with China where the government crushes rentseeking corporates who would weaken the wider economy.