The trouble is that his solutions sound meaningful and profound. Alas he failed to account the fact that humans are not perfectly good. And we're living now with millions of people who died when his solutions were forced on them at gunpoint.
i will spare you my criticism of modern governance and capitalism, i'm sure neither of us are interested.
Marx never governed. i'm sure he would have liked to, and i'm sure it would have been disastrous, as all projects like that seem bound to disaster. it is worth considering his analysis as distinct from Communism, and Communism as distinct from Bolshevism and Maosim and so on. and you should believe those leaders acted in the spirit of Communism as much as you believe the President of the United States acts in the spirit of Capitalism, which is to say: don't be a fool
of course we are at the tip of a deep history of unbounded carnage. you can step forward with all the knowledge bleeding from that grinding mill, or you can black it out, roll the dice, and get back in the hopper
This happened through thoroughly un-Marxist means so it's not clear what a Marxist interpretation offers that's better or more interesting than most other interpretations.
That China liberalized and then gained dominance in several global industries was not "Marxist" in the first sense, indeed it was much the opposite as you note. However as OP was saying it can be analyzed, and I think somewhat effectively explained, through Marxist-style historiography, which prioritizes (A) the inter-class dynamics of different socioeconomic groups and (B) the relationships these groups have to the methods of production. OP is asserting that China used its Marxist historical framework (thinking about who owns factories, and what they get out of that ownership) to recognize weaknesses in the US political economy, which it then acted on to its own benefit. Not that this strategy was per-se "Marxist" in the sense of "communist"
And no murdering millions of your own citizens along the way, yay!!
All developed countries that became rich can be separated in four categories:
1) They had colonies in the past (or even have colonies in the present).
2) They have very little population and lots of natural resources.
3) They underwent a Marxist(-Leninist) revolution.
4) They were benefited by cold-war policies. Being neighbor of communist countries, these countries got external incentive to industrialize and become models for propaganda.
Cases 3 and 4 are linked to Marxist revolutions. Cases 2 are very special ones and cannot be generalized. Case 1 involves much more atrocities than a mere revolution in your own country, it involves invading and stealing other countries.
And if you do not need Marxism, where are all other success cases in the hundreds of countries in the world outside these cases? You know that we have almost 200 countries, only a small minority manage to develop themselves. What explain the incredible coincidence that we have a so small number of developed countries, all them only divided in that 4 cases? What explain that the only countries that manage to became competitor to major capitalist powers are countries like USSR and now China?
Think of the way that China has essentially de-industrialized America. To anyone with the thinnest understanding of Marxism, this is obviously the success of a decades-long, deliberate strategy to build power and a material advantage, by exploiting an innate weakness of finance-oriented management. But it's been conceptually and ideologically invisible to people who aren't thinking that way. Many people observing the "economic" effects end up searching for some kind of singular or complex "economic" cause, not understanding the whole process as a higher-order materialist project.