Bingo.
In the West, we often assume that economic freedom inexorably leads to political freedom.
That simply cannot be backed up from world history.
There have been plenty of kleptocratic or oligarchic regimes which were just as authoritarian as any dictatorship or hereditary monarchy.
Fascism is probably the best modern equivalent to the direction in which China appears to be moving, but there are many older examples from Renaissance Europe. Prussia, Imperial Japan from the late 1800s until the end of World War II, and several other more-or-less free enterprise economies also provide examples of nations in which a relatively small number of major business owners held great influence in but not final control over governmental decisions.
A good case can be made that fascism, by moving economic power into the hands of a relatively large number of businessmen whose success has at least some relationship to their merits, can be a transition step to political freedom.
But modern Chinese history seems to be proving that what can happen doesn't always happen.