I'm always fascinated by all the economists who write articles detailing the cost of protectionism to the American economy but I've never seen an article discussing how much Chinese economic policy costs them. Maybe I'm reading the wrong journals.
The way to develop a powerful industry is protectionism. When you have achieved it, the way to avoid others develop powerful industries is free trade.
It was not by way of free trade that the USA, Germany or Japan developed.
Here's one example. Chinese consumers use Alibaba, not Amazon. They use QQ, not Twitter. They use Baidu, not Google. In all of those cases, the foreign brands are higher quality products.
I have heard that some forms of Chinese protectionism are a little more subtle: apparently, the government requires foreign companies manufacturing in China to buy batteries from the domestic Chinese battery industry. Only Chinese companies can buy from the (better, cheaper) foreign companies. I don't remember where I read this though.