I would agree that they are progressive but the problem is that coupled with their progress is that they are violating a lot of human rights that I can't really be on their side in terms of progress. Also, their contribution to crypto is just that they have a lot of people that are interested and the state also bought a lot of bitcoin.
Violation of human rights is a major accusation being made against the Chinese government for sometime. And we are hearing this ever since 1959, when they annexed Tibet to China. Recently they have targeted more and more ethnic minority groups. But there is not much opposition to this from the Chinese population. Because China underwent rapid economic growth during the last three decades while their neighbors such as India lagged behind. For the vast majority of the people, economic growth is more important than freedom of expression.