Even today Ford’s CEO talks about Chinese cars when discussing what they’re worried about, not Tesla.
And then there’s also the battery cost revolution which is again being driven by Chinese companies, whereas Tesla’s in house design has largely failed.
Tesla’s entry into the Chinese market via the Shanghai Gigafactory (2019) acted as a "catfish," forcing local Chinese "new forces" like NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto to lower prices and accelerate technological innovation.
China supplied the batteries, sure.
But there's definitely a pre-Tesla and post-Tesla world regarding the vehicles themselves. Tesla changed the image of EVs available to the general public by making performant and low maintenance vehicles that looked futuristic and were capable of things basically only supercars could, for a fraction of the price. And they built the DC charging infrastructure all over the world to support long-range trips, which was non-existent before Tesla. EVs before Teslas were basically niche experiments.
The Nissan Leaf (which predates any Tesla production car) was pretty much an electric version of previous Nissan cars. The VW eGolf (contemporaneous with the Tesla Model S) was _literally_ an electric version of a previous VW car. The VW ID.3 and 4, which are currently leading the European market, are also pretty much like VW electric cars. In practice, 'weird' electric cars mostly failed.
Tesla made long-distance driving in EVs possible. Tesla made EV sexy, desirable. It catalyzed the Chinese EV industry. Nissan didn't remotely accomplish those things.
Like someone else said, people think in terms of a pre-Tesla and post-Tesla world. I don't know that there's a strong case against that framing.