You put it better than I could TBH. it feels as though, with the momentum of the bourgeois system in the late 20th century, there was some arguement for making a strategic retreat from socialism in earnest, similar perhaps to the Socialism with Chinese characteristics of Deng Xiaoping.

Dialectically, of course, China’s development of socialism was never going to mirror the Soviet system, given that the former was permitted to develop socialism in relative peace as NATO saw the PRC as leverage against the USSR. Perhaps if the the Soviets were not the prime target of American hegemony, but instead China, history would have occurred conversely.