Actually, something else occurred to me
https://jrbenjamin.com/2015/12/04/how-thomas-friedman-gets-china-wrong/
https://archive.vn/tRZjg
So the problem with China envy is that it always uses very spatially specific examples. Shanghai airport for example.
It is also very time-specific. The CCP took power in 1949. Following that there was the Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural revolution. I'd rather have been in Brazil at the time.
Since Tiananmen, the CCP essentially decided to adopt capitalism but not democracy. So the deal was 'Shut up about political reform and we'll make you rich'. So you get a nice shiny airport if you live in Shanghai and presumably a tolerable level of oppression if you toe the line. Also, importantly they had a sort of pseudo system of checks and balances. Leaders had term limits and it took some time for them to become Paramount Leader with the risks that presented of them going full Mao-style crazy.
However, Xi Jinping has removed term limits, clamped down on freedom in both China and Hong Kong, and openly plots war against the US and most of Asia, a war that would be ruinous for the whole region.
So Shanghai airport in the 90s is not a fair example as VDH pointed out. John Rawls said that before living in a society you have to assume that you've got
no control in space or time where you end up in that society. In the CCP you've got more chance of being a peasant somewhere outside the period of stability between Tiananmen and Xi than you do ending up a yuppie inside it.
It's this hellish nature of life in a Communist state that justifies Pinochet-like measures to stop it from happening.