I'm in no way a Chinese nationalist lol, I just think their progress has been good and the CCP is still a socialist institution that genuinely is pursuing communist ends. Marxism is important, but Marx was just a man. His writings were descriptive and very predictive, but in no way prescriptive. Marx wrote about capitalism it's development and without his writings, we wouldn't have the language that worked to well to organize the working class and initiate revolutions across the world.

The main reason I don't see China as a failed socialist project is because there are tons of existing failed socialist projects. Most of Eastern Europe, parts of the Middle East, South America, Africa, have revolutions that failed and reverted to capitalism. One commonality in these failed revolutions is a massive reduction in quality of life, wages, lifespan, healthcare, and satisfaction with the government. As well as expansion of violent police state and destruction/privatization of public works. None of which is happening in China.

So either China is a huge outlier in the large list of examples of failed socialism, or they're still following socialist principles in some way.