Most of them are much less strategic about what they drive for. But a "more free" state could certainly be more strategic as well about aims, goals, and definition of success; the US has done it before to various extents, for instance.
The claim has often been that it'll eventually collapse like in the Soviet Union—because "not caring about what individuals want—has been believed to be a major limiting factor, not an advantage. But it hasn't yet.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...
And the occupied place isn't very important to the state, but rather only to a couple of residents.
All others just show that demolitions have started, and there are houses not yet demolished.
0/1.4 billions of people is actually convincing the other way you intended.
The point is that China doesn't "just crush" dissenters. This is ignorant Western fantasy which is used by people to justify the dismantling of their own rights. China needs a Bill of Rights like the US's, and most of the US populace needs to stop being such a sucker for nearly century-old propaganda that it doesn't burn its own treasure in service of elite-propagated paranoia.
Nail houses always lose. They have their services and access cut-off by private developers without any recourse to the courts. The nail houses exist only for the duration of arbitration proceedings over compensation for the property. FMV value is usually determined by prices before the area was considered for development, which in poor areas is a pittance. But in arbitration the villagers are merely postponing the inevitable.
Also, IIRC, nail houses are rare as outside cities private ownership of property was not common, at least into the early 2000s. (Not sure how common it is now.) And they only became a thing circa 2004 when China amended their constitution to require legal process for expropriation, but that process provides much fewer protections than it does in, e.g., the US.