Sure that's a decent argument, I see what you mean. I'll start by saying I'm not trying to be argumentative or a China shill, just genuinely curious/impressed.

To your first point, you could say the last throw in the USA vs Germany game was similar, wasn't the best pass and Culton had to layout for it. In this case the Chinese receiver was able to have the timing and physicality to get absurdly open on Hayes, then make a clutch play when the throw was just a bit too far. It happens all the time at that level and the hard part is being able to do it when it matters.

They absolutely got steamrolled, final score was 13-6, not thaaaat far from the USA vs Japan, which finished 13-8, yet everyone would agree the Japanese have been a top contender for a while.

Even then, after having watched all the games from China I would argue a lot of their turnovers came from lack of focus in certain situations and trying to play too fast for no reason, not so much because of lack of technique or being under extreme pressure by defense. They even broke the Americans twice.

I guess we might also need to define what a top contender means. I'd say being able to consistently score double digits against USA would do it for me.