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Yes, Boeing made the first stage of the Saturn V.
‘Defense contractor’ and ‘small’ are oxymorons. The old guard, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocketdyne, etc. all got used to cost-plus contracts and so geared their production assuming they’d always have them. Now they’re big mad that SpaceX and others are upstaging them in cost, performance and scale because, surprise surprise, decades of no accountability doesn’t foster competence.
Rocket production has always been a public/private partnership, the only difference is SpaceX takes commercial customers too, not just governments (or companies who basically are part of their government).
I’ll give it a shot.
China can discipline individual capitalists but it cannot discipline Capital (in more vulgar terms, international capital).
Since it lacks this capacity China is therefore dependent on Capital cooperating with it to achieve its vision of Socialism.
Thus it will not achieve Socialism with its current trajectory.