“It's not a good metric but it's easy to calculate so let's use that to make a completely nonsensical point”.
Did you know what happened like this week, with the military parade stuff and financial institutions being told to behave around that because the government didn't want any market turbulence around their glorious parade?
The reality is that Chinese government has total control over the entirety of the Chinese economy. They don't exert their entire control all the time and let things go around as long as it doesn't interfere with their agenda, but it will interfere in absolutely anything whenever they decide for whatever preposterous reason like a military parade or anything.
I'm no fan of Chinese authoritarianism, but you could say exactly the same about the US government. This is not a good rebuttal.
We're just 3 years from the US government shutting down all businesses during Covid? In WWII the US forced its entire manufacturing sector to retool from consumer products to war equipment. Detroit went from producing cars to producing tanks. Until recent decades the US had a mandatory draft where they took young men from their families involuntarily to go die in the jungles of Vietnam. I could cite a million other examples.
Not liking the data because it conflicts with the narrative you have in your head does not mean the data is wrong.
> We're just 3 years from the US government shutting down all businesses during Covid?
Did you see the Chinese version of Covid lockdown? Claiming that the US did the same is complete nonsense.
What the US did during Covid is closer to what Xi did for military parade stuff than what they did for Covid.
> Not liking the data because it conflicts with the narrative you have in your head does not mean the data is wrong
The data isn't wrong. Your interpretation of the data makes no sense, that's the issue here.