Only seeing 2 paragraphs here, with no paywall notice. Odd.
One of the key factors mentioned in the article: the erosion of the “the middle ring” from many societies (not just China): “close-ish” but not intimate/familial face-to-face relationships (neighbours, coworkers etc.) that are key to growing a social movement with real world activity.
I saw a similar argument made elsewhere. Namely, that China's boom can be partly explained by the fact that surveillance tech (i.e. China's comparative advantage) is particularly beneficial in low-trust societies. Not just the sinister social-credit system, but just everyday mobile apps with their reputation systems and scoring of every commercial interaction. This kind of radical transparency is logically more beneficial in countries like China than in the kind of highly cohesive (democratic, redistributive) societies where people were already somewhat happy to trust complete strangers.