China had to abandon the economics of Communism in order to produce an economic boom finally after decades of extreme failure. They had to adopt systems of the market economy: private property, stock exchanges & stock ownership, real estate ownership, privatization of the means of production, wealth accumulation, business formation, etc. etc.

They hold on to the politics of the Communist party dictatorship as a means to continue their power and wealth extraction (China's political elites are by far the wealthiest politicians on earth, they make the US Congress look like paupers).

Trying to apply communist ideology directly in China led to famines nearly as deadly as a decade and a half of war, both civil and against the Japanese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine