Since when is it alarming to complement another country's progress, especially when you're not enemies? I'm no fan of the CCP (and no Kiwi) but this sounds ridiculous.
Without evoking Godwin's law, just think about it: China is a dictatorship oppressing free speech and many of their citizens that don't share the official views, torturing them, closing them in concentration camps etc. As a politician, you should know better how to express your admiration for progress.
It's alarming to compliment a dictatorship that keeps its people in chains, has millions of minorities in "re-education camps" and kills anyone who becomes too vocal against the party.
Just because Trump has tried to normalise just that (ref: Russia and North Korea) doesn't make it acceptable.
That's definitely a huge problem for the USA, on many levels. However, people in the USA don't regularly self-immolate to express how badly their compatriots are treated, and this happens regularly in Tibet. One would think this would give the Western world a good idea of how oppressive the Chinese regime can be.