At the time that OP is describing, censorship was very powerful indeed. Also, Allende's Chile cannot be easily compared to an Eastern Bloc nation in the '70s or '80s.

I could imagine some kind of network developed by an Eastern Bloc nation before 1990, but it would have been extremely centralized, hierarchical, and very strictly controlled.

> see China's rapidly developing communications infrastructure

Things have changed meanwhile, even in China.

The point GP was making is more nuanced than that. The governments of eastern Bloc countries were well aware their citizens were not well off and would remain so for a long time to come. I imagine that Chile under Allende hadn’t quite hit that stage, and presumably the government still had some belief they were on the road to prosperity. Also I’m no expert, and it might be splitting hairs but can we really describe the Chilean government of the time as “communist”?

He was a self-described Marxist socialist, implemented sweeping changes inc. widespread land reforms, and was the target of an US-backed coup. I'd day it hits all the checkmarks.

Yeah, I also immediately thought of Project Cybersyn when I read this post. On the other hand, Allende's vision for Chile would probably be better described as a democratic-socialist one than a "communist state" one.

That's what Allende's supporters say, yes. But one of the things I took away (of my own accord) from the book, "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile", is that the conservatives were rightfully fearful of Allende's government moving inexorably toward communist central planning. (Note: the book is, IMO, unbiased wrt the politics. It's basically a Ph.D thesis on Cybersyn and--because as a thesis paper it needs to make some novel argument beyond documenting the history--why Chile's early experience with integrating advanced technology into its economy failed. In as much as it's not clickbait, the book title is more matter of fact--Cybersyn was an Allende-era program. The author wasn't trying to treat Cybersyn as some sort metaphor for Allende's policies.)

One of the reasons Cybersyn failed was because it was difficult to get private enterprises to cooperate with the central authority--either the Cybersyn group (which in the grand scheme of things was a relatively small affair), or any other government group. This was deeply frustrating to the government and to Allende. The pace of government takeovers was accelerating rapidly until Allende's assassination.

Of course, part of the reason private enterprise refused to cooperate was because of it's antagonistic relationship with Allende's government and the left generally. We could "blame" the capitalists for this failure. But that's sort of beside the point. The fact remains that for those and other reasons, Allende was on the path to something akin to communism (Venezuela if not Cuba) simply because that's where circumstances were leading him. He couldn't go around, under, or over the opposition; the only way to achieve his originally modest goals was to conquer the opposition--that is, nationalize the bulk of Chilean industry so he could directly pull the levers necessary to achieve his goals.

> see China's rapidly developing communications infrastructure

You're referencing the greatest historical demonstration of the positive, rapid results of abandoning Communism. Courtesy of Deng Xiaoping very publicly opening China to embracing market economics instead. To the extent China abandons Communism, is the extent to which they'll continue to develop.

They've even had to come up with a special name for it, because of how embarrassingly Communism failed in all regards compared to the post Xiaoping era.

> is the extent to which they'll continue to develop

Is this necessarily true? The rapid development is a because they opened up to other economies from a position of underdevelopment, but there has to be a set point somewhere considering they have a massive population and more or less the means of production.