The last part is a pretty strong claim. Yes, communist governments have historically often failed to discover mechanisms for innovation because of that lack of

The last part is a pretty strong claim. Yes, communist governments have historically often failed to discover mechanisms for innovation because of that lack of signals and discovery by spontaneous demand, but China is not the Soviet Union. Centrally planned running shoes get you shoes that look like the boxes they came in, to paraphrase Stephenson but there's a difference between that kind of rigid system and steering demand into directions where consumption is aligned with the public good or say, scientific progress. What killed innovation in communist governments in my opinion wasn't the focus on social ends as a goal by the state, it was killing almost all forms of entrepreneurship or spontaneous organisation to get to those ends. The sort of dogmatic market thinking denies that such ends should even exist or that activity can be redirected with little basis for that claim.