That's a lot of whataboutism and goalpost-shifting that you're doing there. I never claimed that the EU doesn't ever pass consumer protection laws or that they never regulate corporations.

In fact, implicit in my argument about regulatory capture is the notion that there exists regulatory bodies who are performing the function of regulation of the market whose interests get perverted by the appointment of business people and executives, often from the exact same industries which said regulatory body oversees. So pointing out that regulatory bodies regulate in the EU is no more proof to the contrary of the existence of regulatory capture than using ice-skates on a hockey rink disproves the fact that ice-skates are designed for use on ice.

You must be pretty across China to be able to make a call like "let alone criticize their own government".

I take it that you don't consider the White Paper Protests to be criticisms of the Chinese government and its COVID policy for some reason? Have you just not looked into this protest or is there some other reason why it's not an example of Chinese citizens voicing criticisms of their government?

And as for elections, China has them. (Remind me again how people are elected to the European Commission, the Secretariat of the European Parliament, the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, and the Committee of Permanent Representatives...)