China didn't have to have foreign investment and capitalism in a vacuum. Mao was attempting to resolve contradictions and industrialize without resorting to capitalism, but the contradiction between rural and urban labor got huge. Not to mention the u.s. knocking on the door of it all. The u.s. assumed that if China accepted foreign investment, they'd eventually become liberalized politically by proxy. But that hasn't happened. The CPC has actually managed to maintain their political power and crush bourgeois powers from forming a coherent class. Jack Ma isn't buying up Pinkertons to smash his business; he's getting put in his place by the party. I found it very hard to believe that China could have separated it's politics from its business, but I really think they have. And Xi is very clearly a true believer in the people, listening to the mass line, and now that foreigners have funded the no more poverty project, he's even starting to press the socialism button. I'm no uncritical Dengist by any means, but the results sort of speak for themselves if you don't read western society into them.