If China really is a socialist country or one pushing towards communism, why do you think they are waiting to push more directly in that direction? What is to be strategically gained from capitalizing your economy, essentially going backwards for 50 years instead of continuing to push for communism?
Strategically? Survival. China didn't have to have a "Special Period" like DPRK or Cuba and that made a real difference. Their material conditions (and their antipathy to the Soviets) limited their choices and they chose to strategically cave to the global market. I disagree with their path, I'd like them to be less marketised, I'd like them to be more internationalist, and I'd like the neo-Maoists to be more dominant. But they're still here so it doesn't matter what I think.
That's not to say that a Socialist Market Economy doesn't have risks, it absolutely does risk capitalist backsliding, and that happened during the 1990s-2000s. Corruption skyrocketed, and the party was infiltrated by capitalists and nationalists with no ideological commitment.
Xi has been slowly rolling back billionaire power. Using capitalist forces to drive primitive accumulation, then mercing the billionaires and nationalising the industry.
He is building Socialism but that requires rebuilding grassroots society, bringing the billionaires under control, isolating the nationalists and neo-Confucianists and capitalists in the party, warding off CIA "New Left" attempts (which unfortunately has occasionally resulted in loyal Marxists being targeted.) All while trying to prevent encirclement from the USA, which is still more than capable of destroying China if it tries for a Leeroy-Jenkins Permanent Revolution.
China is still not a developed nation and has to rise up to the level that allows Socialism as Marx understood it to be built. Mao understood this. So does Xi.