Seeing the state
You haven't seen the state, you've seen silly stories western media comes up with. Occasionally those stories are supported by facts taken wildly out of context to the point of being deceptive, other times they're fabricated from whole cloth.
China isn't some kind of utopia, but it is a model of good, responsive governance. It's actually difficult to make any general statements as it's massive, and there's a high degree of local control, so the same problem will be tackled a dozen, sometimes contradictory(eg, expanding public transit while inducing greater demand for cars) different ways, with varying levels of efficacy. Sometimes the inferior solutions are quietly replaced by more the ones proven more effective, other times
spoiler
they build like 10 toilets with TVs, heated seats, attendants, etc for people to show on xhs or whatever and say the problem is solved, and then the rest of the city's public toilets are the same 3 squat, 1 pedastool, with a basket of shitty toilet paper next to each, that you can smell from a block away.
Wait did the bear write this?
Well a bear wrote it.