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infamously overcomplex and logistics heavy vehicles like an IFV

Uh... what? The BMP-1 and 2 series, literally among the most famous IFVs, are around 13 and 14 tonnes respectively, and not all that complex - in fact, in terms of total Soviet production numbers, it seems like the BMP-1 & 2 are pretty comparable to the wheeled BTR-60 + 70 + 80/82. Now, Western IFVs are heavy and complex, but that's just everything Western, it's not necessarily an indictment of the whole concept.

Even the BMP-3, which packs a 100mm cannon in addition to the regular 30mm autocannon, is barely 19 tonnes, and again, hardly some ultra-complex vehicle. And Russia, you know, the country actually fighting in the Ukraine war which has supposedly proven IFVs to be useless, is still procuring large numbers of BMP-3s, and using them quite a bit. Now, they do seem to have given up on their developments of more Western-style IFVs like the Kurganets-25, and especially the T-15 Armata (which actually is ridiculously heavy and expensive), but if anything, that only further proves the point that it's Western IFVs that suck, while the Soviet style is still chugging along just fine.

And China's armored vehicles are more in keeping with the Soviet style than the Western one, although generally somewhat heavier - the ZBD-04 is essentially their take on the BMP-3 (same 100mm+30mm armament, a decent bit heavier in the ZBD-04A variant, but still lighter than modern Western IFVs), the ZBL-08 is a pretty regular 8x8 wheeled APC/IFV in a similar weight class to the ZBD-04, the latest ZBL-19 doesn't have much information available on it, and while there's some estimates placing it at 35 tonnes or even more, that doesn't really make sense given that it's supposed to also be amphibious, so I would assume it can't be that much heavier.

Overall, I don't see why this style of cheaper and lighter IFVs shouldn't still be invested in. You're falling into the same trap that "tanks are dead" discourse runs into, which is you're just looking at these vehicles being vulnerable and concluding that it means they're obsolete - but what actually determines the obsolescence of a given piece of equipment is going to be whether the role it fulfills is still relevant. If that job still has to be done, and there's nothing else to do it better, then tough luck, however risky and vulnerable, the job has to be done. Planes in WW2 were incredibly vulnerable, and over a hundred thousand were lost by both the Allies and the Axis - but they didn't just give up on the whole concept of combat aircraft, because they obviously still fulfilled a valuable role which couldn't be carried out by anything else. Now, battleships after WW2 did become obsolete - because the role of a big ship with a bunch of guns and a ton of armor was, indeed, no longer relevant in a world where planes launched from carriers (and later also missiles launched from guided-missile destroyers and cruisers) would now be doing the fighting, with the ships not even necessarily being in range to actually shoot at one another with guns.

The role of armored transport for infantry is obviously still relevant. You're also being misled here by sloppy interpretation of the evidence - the Ukraine war has actually showed that armored vehicles can sometimes survive numerous drone hits, there are methods of making them more resistant, and drone teams have a very low rate of fire. Many vehicles are only hit once or twice, survive, and then just move on, perhaps with somewhat reduced functionality, but the propaganda footage obviously doesn't show this - it shows the last impact that actually took the vehicle out, not the whole half-hour-long engagement that eventually led to destruction, and obviously not the many instances of a vehicle surviving and then just driving away. Additionally, drone teams can be overwhelmed, by launching multiple attacks at different locations, or massing a ton of equipment in one attack - even if the drones themselves are very cheap and plentiful, there still need to be human personnel piloting them, and there's only so many of them around. So far, the effort in exploiting AI capabilities to facilitate fully autonomous drones has not borne fruit, so the limit of how many drones can actually be flown at a given moment of time will remain - and thus, vehicles will sometimes be able to slip through the drone "net" as it were.

You're also assuming that a vehicle shown off at an expo means there's already production lines being set up, which is just... not how things work. These are mostly individual prototypes, trying to gauge interest before manufacturing is invested in. See all the vehicles that Russia has shown off, some of which I've referenced - none of them had actually entered large-scale production, the Russians found out in actual combat experience that they wouldn't work out, and mostly abandoned them to re-focus on stuff that does work. Vaporware is, like, most of the stuff shown off at military expos.

In this case, these are vehicles targeted at export, and not necessarily reflective of what the PLA is actually planning on using. China exports a whole lot of equipment that they themselves don't use. See for example the VN20 heavy IFV - there's no indication that the PLA has interest in something like that, it's purely an export product, and hey, if you can bilk the Saudis or some other country like that out of some of the way-too-much money they have on their hands, go for it. And if not - it's just one or a handful of prototypes, it doesn't cost that much, and even R&D that leads to unsuccessful products can still bring about other useful knowledge as a result.

Now, in another comment you also made the point that "What China should be sending are mobile mortar carriers, drones, MRAP vehicles, rocket artillery and a literal mountain of heavy infantry weapons", which is also... kind of baffling. It's the client who determines what to buy, and what a company or country designs for export will reflect such market trends, China does also make all the things you've mentioned (in fact, if by "heavy infantry weapons" you mean things like ATGMs, grenade launchers, .50 cal machine guns, then China's probably the world leader in those), but if their clients are deciding to keep buying supposedly useless IFVs... that's on them, not somehow on China.

They've weighed their needs, considered their situation, and decided what to buy - China just provides it, they can't do the thinking and planning in other governments' place. The Soviets tried that - and their meddling in various resistance movements' doctrines and insisting on imposing their methodology focusing on conventional mechanized warfare wasn't particularly successful, and led to many such movements turning Maoist rather than ML, as Mao had specifically developed his strategic ideas after Soviet advisors led the Chinese communists to disaster.

Sure I would prefer China to invest in social welfare and providing free healthcare and high quality education to the people (600 million rural population still largely excluded from the improved living standards in the rest of the country, despite boasting about poverty alleviation above global threshold).

However, this would require China to raise income for the common people to increase domestic consumption and stimulate the economy from within. The neoliberal ideology necessarily precludes that from happening, having abdicated much of the economy (including high tech industries and infrastructure) to the private sector and local governments (decentralization) and the central government only retained its leverage in public sector like defense, where huge spending can occur.

For example, China has a lot of potential in playing a major role in democratizing green technology but the reliance on private sector and neoclassical economics are causing many of these companies to be locked in bitter competition to gain profits (or to kill off their competitors in a race to the bottom price cuts) rather than having a strategic national level coordination to grow these sectors to address climate change on a global level (such as sharing the technology with Global South countries especially those in Africa).

This is not just a China problem but many other Global South countries have their governments consulted by such neoclassical educated policymakers who graduated from prestigious Western universities. And it is no coincidence that a global economic downturn is pushing all the major countries including the US and Europe into militarization, because that’s one of the few places their governments have direct intervention on.

To break out of this stalemate would require an emancipation from the ideological indoctrination under neoliberalism that had dominated the world since the 1990s, when the fall of the USSR opened the door wide open to the uncontrolled spread of neoliberal ideology across the world.