Its like Hillary walking into a working class kitchen for the first time.
They've been shielded from even critical support of China and other AES for so long they literally, not figuratively, literally cannot process that people exist that have beliefs that aren't Reddit Approved. They immediately assume it's bots or wumao. Human beings can't possibly hold these beliefs, so they must be Oriental hordes or actual robots.
That's all good and well, but to me, it reflects that the party has strong socialist ideological roots (of course it does, thanks to Mao), but "past performance does not indicate future returns" and there is still room for them to lib tf out instead of push for socialism. Xi is not an example of this, but his predecessors were liberal dweebs imo. My understanding is that we are lucky to have a Marxist in his position at all (kinda like how Corbyn slipped upward through the cracks due to some Labour infighting).
Im not concerned with Xi specifically, or the track they're on today, but if they ever achieve status as a hegemonic power, are they going to make the push for global socialism? I'm not convinced, but it's far from impossible. I definitely don't see them cracking down and becoming a great Satan 2 or anything, so it's all positive anyway.