It is a false dichotomy and a classic cognitive error. "China has developed in spite of an authoritarian government" is a lot less interesting story than "China has developed because it has pioneered a hybrid third-way form of state driven development." Even though I've never heard that story articulated in a non fuzzy form.
Right. It's also what the CCP would like everyone to think. The CCP sort of stumbled into an economic miracle after ending their disastrous economic policies from 1949-79. They didn't pioneer anything new. They reaped the rewards of liberalization from the 1980s through the 2000s, and those rewards were great indeed, but now liberalization has stalled out and is going backwards.
(Infrastructure is sort of a red herring- these flashy projects draw attention, but government willingness to build isn't the decisive factor that drives development. That is why India will still develop in spite of the things Sbane points out, and probably why Indians aren't clamoring for a dictatorship.
Mao was perfectly willing to build infrastructure. In fact he was obsessed with heavy industry as well. But he couldn't finance any of it because China was too poor. During the 1980s, China was even poorer than India, "despite" (more likely because of) 40 years of dictatorship. They also had this little thing called the Great Leap Forward which killed 40 million people in artificial famine which India never had. The communists appreciated infrastructure, science, and heavy and light industry, but what they failed to appreciate was an ordered, regulated, but open market.)
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