That is exactly correct. It makes no sense to conflate the two and disregard the purposes of each. In the case of the chinese wheelbarrow it is not clear that it was so superior to the european cart. A person simply can't move the same amount of material as easily as a pack animal. The chinese cart is thus tremendously labor intensive. One person must move a load that could be done by 1/4 of a pack animal on a wheeled cart.
Additionally, the one other advantage of being able to use the wheelbarrow on narrow paths instead of roads is not something that would normally matter. Roads can move people and goods much more effectively and faster than narrow paths.
The article alludes to this by referring to the collapse of the road network and the subsequent development of the wheelbarrow. Of course, if they had roads, they may never had adopted to the wheelbarrow in the first place.
What the author describes as inventiveness is really necessity borne of weakness. Only if human labor is relatively cheap would such an invention ever be considered. China fit these conditions perfectly, however. The dramatic rise in population over the course of the first millenium in China made such efficiency concerns moot. Labor intensive rice agriculture also needed large groups of people anyway.
I think your analysis is somewhat off - at the same time in western Europe, people weren't using carts, they were carrying everything by hand. So it's not wheelbarrow vs. cart, it's wheelbarrow vs. nothing.
Also, narrow tracks would be much easier to build than roads which need carts. Again, it's narrow paths vs. nothing, rather than narrow paths vs. wide paved roads.
For the requirements - a heavy but symmetric load over narrow roads - it's a pretty good solution. At least until you have to stop!
Interestingly, trading inherent stability and rigidity for more control effort to give you a lighter more manouverable design is something we have only just "reinvented" with some fighter aircraft (and the Segway ;-)
In spite of having active/computer control systems fro 30years we still do seem to stick to the 19C railway engineering mentality of - build it big/strong/stable/rigid/heavy
Additionally, the one other advantage of being able to use the wheelbarrow on narrow paths instead of roads is not something that would normally matter. Roads can move people and goods much more effectively and faster than narrow paths. The article alludes to this by referring to the collapse of the road network and the subsequent development of the wheelbarrow. Of course, if they had roads, they may never had adopted to the wheelbarrow in the first place.
What the author describes as inventiveness is really necessity borne of weakness. Only if human labor is relatively cheap would such an invention ever be considered. China fit these conditions perfectly, however. The dramatic rise in population over the course of the first millenium in China made such efficiency concerns moot. Labor intensive rice agriculture also needed large groups of people anyway.