Socialist enterprise and markets can be competitive, in fact more competitive than a capitalist system. China is actually super innovative now, having caught up technologically with the west in part by leveraging the same import substitution policies and general disregard for other countries' capitalist's "intellectual property" which drove industrialization in the western nations.

The two big differences between socialism with Chinese characteristics and western neoliberalism are the fact that SWCC places at its core collective ownership of the means of production and state investment in developing said means of production. Whereas the west privatizes everything and only invests state funds in the further enrichment of the few who own said privatized means of production.

The real boost is SOEs. Competition is good, it just needs a single large-scale player more concerned about the public good than private profits to push the industry in the right direction. There's a reason SWCC works so well while the Soviet system failed. Deng Xiaoping was a genius.