If you want to build Socialism, you have to have sufficient means of production, and the most efficient way of ramping up production is by adopting Capitalism.
All of the above you mentioned is just naked Capitalism, without any trappings of fake democracy to placate the masses. It's inevitable, necessary even, if you want to achieve 100 years of economic development in three decades.
The beauty of CPC's play is that they made use of the American strategy to subvert them, and subverted it to turn China into a powerhouse all the while staying firmly at the helm.
Xi's greatness lies in the fact that he does his job, and let's other people do theirs. He didn't immediately jump into the fray on HK and Wuhan, which actual strongmen would do since they have a need to appear in charge. Instead, he let relevant authorities and organizations take care of the issue, and took charge of the guiding principles.
On HK, he quietly reaffirmed his support for Carrie Lam even though *everyone* was hating on her at the time: the insurgents for her being a symbol of Beijing authority, and the patriots for her not doing enough to quell the riots. A strongman looking for populist support would have sacked Lam and installed a "tough guy" in her place, maybe even sent in the troops. Instead, Xi let the HK authorities do their job, all the while quietly cutting off foreign funding for the insurgents before striking the finishing blow with the NSL.
On COVID, he let health officials such as Zhong Nanshan take the spotlight. Even as the PLA was pouring into Wuhan and the Huoshenshan hospital was being built in 10 days, Xi quietly stayed in the background. Officials who screwed up in the pandemic response, however, were quickly sacked and replaced. Discipline was extraordinarily tight during the pandemic response, and this led to unwavering public support for the government's lockdown measures. In contrast, just look at the American response: Trump repeatedly contradicting Fauci and making nonsense claims, trying to pin the failures of pandemic response on his political opponents. If you're looking for strongman politics, this is the textbook example.
