China has destroyed some of their environment, trading off building up industry for pollution. This also happened in former Soviet countries.
The Chinese were made poor by the Communist party and only rescued by moving away from the doctrine to something else.
When you live in a country where any negative expression will get you killed, arrested, etc. You quickly only hear the positive voices.
So just like the west with stagnant wages and pension systems in free fall, while healthcare, education, housing, student debt, etc rises?
The air pollution currently in China is pretty bad, but air pollution goes away pretty quickly after you turn off the coal plants, and oversized promises to pensioners seems like a pretty easy obligation to amend when you have total control over the state.
If making good on pension promises was easy, the CCP would have done it by now.