If free-market capitalism always beats top-down managed states and socialism, why are Republicans so terrified of big, mean China?

Given their theory of superiority, why worry about a nation that has, according to GOP orthodoxy, chosen the path to destruction rather than the GOP’s corporatist road to Valhalla? Mind you, this question is not meant as a defense of China, Inc.

Republicans are quite right when they claim the Chinese government engages in unfair trade instead of free trade. They are right that China uses currency manipulation to give their exports an unfair advantage and to render imports from their trading partners artificially costly within China. The are right the Chinese prop up unprofitable industries with government subsidies to let them price exports below cost and capture a world market before jacking up prices to recover investment. But if free-market capitalism, where Gilded Age trusts and cartels did all those things; is so far superior to a government doing them, then so what?

If China does all those things, which I would argue they do, then by GOP Free-Market theory, it should doom China to economic collapse, shouldn’t it? Do they not believe their own rhetoric, or is this just a flaw in the GOP’s ability to think rationally?