Economically, sure. (Those always struck me as sour grapes or a fundamental misunderstanding of how debt works in a centrally-planned economy.)

Politically, however, the CCP had intraparty competition that avoided the sort of rot that felled the Soviets. It also kept the Party thinking long term. Hong Kong and Taiwan are good examples of Xi's impatience. Absent intervention, Hong Kong would have uncontroversially folded into China in 2047. The combination of China's military and economic prowess, then, could have encouraged peaceful unification with Taiwan. But Xi was impatient. He wanted it in his lifetime. So he rushed Hong Kong and screwed up not only Taiwan, but relations with all his neighbors, from the Philippines to India.

Dictators like to style themselves as monarchs. But monarchy has a continuity that dictatorships don't. That makes them more impatient and more unstable, particularly at the transfer of power.