I don't know if "free market actors" is exactly the right way to describe the two things he talks about. War is certainly not a function of the market, Wall Street is kind of a grey area that uses the language of free markets to describe something that is an odd state-empowered cartel. Clearly the bailout was not a "free market" event.

So...I don't think he is implicitly or explicitly saying anything about China's authoritarian regime. It wasn't free markets that lost the money he's speaking of. And, there wasn't a trade of that money for political freedoms and economic opportunities. The American people just got a bad deal out of their government and their financiers. They didn't buy freedom with that money, they just got fleeced.