[roenxi]

You might want to check the 'work well' part of that. The average American has 4x times more than the average Chinese national, even after ppp adjustments. I couldn't quickly find figures for the median, which I'd refer to use. China's net migration is also negative.

It seems highly reasonable that China would be doing better if they toned down their protectionist policies.

[ben_w]

On the other hand, China’s GDP PPP per capita has gone up by a factor of 5.294 between 2000 and 2016 (source: WolframAlpha), so even if it is being held back by protectionism, that doesn’t look like a major part of the story.