From an East Asian perspective what China is doing really isn't anything new and with the same pitfalls as the former Asian tigers.

>our system is the best because we're the best, because of the system we have.

This isn't what's happening at all. The causes and reasons why infrastructure and Western cities are so bad have been studied for decades and are well known, just as we've been studying what makes Tokyo or Hong Kong work so well. People are constantly critiquing the underlying system of incentives and entangled interests, you can hundreds of popular threads on HN, Reddit, MSM, hell even with Elon Musk's DOGE.

The only time when I see the mythical self-convinced westerner evoked is precisely when critique of other cultures come in, often from cultures that feel a need to constantly defend themselves.