Because "free markets, competition, being voluntary" are propaganda by capitalists using their owned media and purchased government to make its victims double as its defenders.
The goal of market capitalism is to end competition often by buying out up and coming rivals to kill the threat, manipulate the markets to your advantage using anything from bribery to cost benefit analysis of potential consequences/fines for sociopathic actions to potential profits, and conspire with your economic sector to coerce the workers you need into accepting less.
This is just expanded indentured servitude with a marketing team.
Large professional centrally planned economies do a better job of managing scarce resources than a pack of ill-informed and uncoordinated Wall Street Lemmings.
When you're governing wisely, there is no need to be despotic. Conflicts and contradictions necessitate a large militant police state to keep the lower class in line. But when you've got generous surpluses and a rising quality of life, people are generally happy and easy to govern.
The US subsidizes their EV industry twice as much as China. The real why China can do this is because the US has gutted their industrial base in favor of financialization while China built up their industrial base.