Isn’t “sandbox capitalism” - real capitalism and what the us is trending towards is the “Wild West” capitalism with monopolies, trusts, and all the other anti competitive things that arise in the free market if there is no external force that tries to keep the market “fair”?

I mean this is not the case for either, but the systems are setup to drift in these directions - a market needs some sort of regulation to keep things sane, otherwise you end up with standard oil and the like.

You want the people with guns controlling things to be at least nominally interested in “the people” and produce more than just “return on investment”.

Not saying that China is like this or that US is bad, but saying that China is bad because it is “controlled capitalism” is kinda missing the point of what it should be in the best case.