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But they did engage in grand designs (like the Aral water diversion project, and more recently the three gorges dam project) and lax environmental concerns. So it's not clear to me that they were "better" however they were perhaps worse because ideology dictated what they did moreso than some other considerations.

No, but their environmental record hasn't been great, either. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea for one particularly spectacular example.

Only because they were too inefficient - they didn't do anything very well beyond controlling the people. And, come to think of it, not even that.