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Chinese actors are still universally very pretty, only with slightly different beauty norms than in Korea. If anything, the dominating beauty norms in china are still more boyish than Korea or even Japan.
The reason Korean dramas are more popular in the west than the Japanese or Chinese equivalents isn't because their actors are better looking, they're not (than the Chinese anyway), it's because they're much better written, acted, formatted and directed. Are they formulaic? Absolutely, but not more so than their Japanese or Chinese counterparts. I do agree that the Japanese sometimes act better though.
I absolutely agree with you that the CCP is a (probably the) major drag on things. Have you noticed the jingle/music they play when the propaganda segments start? I'm of two minds, either this is too is mandated by the party or they're winking towards the audience.
True that the Chinese acting talent pool just seems to terrible. I would personally attribute that to traditional sinic objections to economically precarious professions, with Chinese talent development basically being 30 years behind the evolution of Japanese and Korean talent scouting and development model, compared with the Hong Kong and Taiwanese producer driven model. Given the constraints put on directors and the frankly terrible salaries writers and producers and staff get compared to celebrities, it also explains the formulaic plots and recycled sets. My own limited dealing with Chinese creatives is that they usually leave China, or go into the relatively unmoderated video game scene, which is where you get the Chinese video game trope of 'cute girls with PTSD' being the dominant narrative medium.
As for the CCP tentacles being winked at, I did not notice it. I stopped watching K/C/HK/Tdramas when my wife got bored of them and got hooked on shopping livestreams instead, freeing me from the torment of pretending to care about formulaic love triangles.
There may be great acting talents in these shows, but being shoved into formulaic tropefests for lowest effort highest reward limits opportunities to showcase auteur talents. The Japanese do seem to like their weird shit which lets actors like Hiroyuki Sanada and Ken Watanabe flex their chops, and the Koreans do good KATUSA work with Steven Yuen, and I really like Lee Jung Jae in Acolyte, where he did fantastic work objectively and his performance along with Manny Jacinto elevated an otherwise messy show. For a dude with no native english and just constant micro expressions he did really well, and if Acolyte had focused on him and Dafne Keen instead of the black girl it would have been way better received.
We have not seen opportunities for Chinese auteurs to flex, beyond the stuff from Hong Kong and that is largely the remnants of the 90s-2000s Hong Kong greats like Tony Leung, Andy Lauand Jackie Chan (he was really good in Steelhead). It will be awhile before any modern Chinese actors like Yang Yang will go beyond domestic attention.
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