They genuinely care for people and are doing this for their people's best: it comes on the heels of similar laws targeting addictive online gaming and restricting students access to this around a year ago. It's not about a battle between big tech and government for control (a decidedly Western projection), it's more China being innovative about the real threat to people's well being that tracking, and optimized recommendation can do. We know the threat in the West, just our system cannot do anything about it, because of the "freedom" of liberal democracy's lobbying system's and free market principles. The central government is acting on this because they can. Like most everything CPC does, it is an experiment: e.g, Hainan FTP is the nation's "biggest testing ground for addressing institutional weak links" and "Hainan plays the role of a testing ground for China's opening-up and helps ensure economic security" [2].
If you want to consider second order affects of this flex/ability, here's my take: They have the mandate, the political will, and the real power to enact these experiments / innovative reforms and this is another. Their governing system is constantly evolving. That flexibility is why I think they will win, if you want to compare governing systems: they can simply afford to take more risks, and thereby iterate/zero-in on more correct solutions by exploring the state space of governance, more effectively than less flexibile/more brittle/more stymied-by-existing power-players, "Western liberal democracies". It's good for China, and sad for the West, but I think it's a teachable moment for the West: that I hope can encourage/inspire the West's own period of "reform and opening up"
[1]: Tho understandable from a Western PoV given combative rhetoric of late--it does seem insecure, right? Tho that point is more a voice that wants to be in command of how it is narrated, rather than have Western propaganda (driven by the West's own insecurities about China) misrepresent it