I don't know that I would characterize Marx as orientalist (his theory isn't orientalist in the slightest, much to the chagrin of Edward Said), but he definitely did not understand east Asian societies. Engels wrote about this later in life once more information became available to European historians. Most of what Marx thought about Asian societies came from Hegel, e.g. in the Philosophy of Right, which was so deeply flawed as to be useless.
To be fair, given the "totally not doing an opium genocide here guys" propaganda of the time, it's hard to see how he could have been right at the time without literally going to east Asia for a decade.
I don't know that I would characterize Marx as orientalist (his theory isn't orientalist in the slightest, much to the chagrin of Edward Said), but he definitely did not understand east Asian societies. Engels wrote about this later in life once more information became available to European historians. Most of what Marx thought about Asian societies came from Hegel, e.g. in the Philosophy of Right, which was so deeply flawed as to be useless.
To be fair, given the "totally not doing an opium genocide here guys" propaganda of the time, it's hard to see how he could have been right at the time without literally going to east Asia for a decade.