Yes, this is broadly the conclusion I have with China. On a micro level, your average Chinese worker isn’t experiencing a society that’s that much different from a capitalist one, but on a macro level, the economic characteristic of China isn’t remotely similar to what-should-be similar countries like India or Indonesia at all. I mostly chalk it up to how a nascent stage of socialism would actually look like just like how Italian city-states during the Renaissance is how a nascent stage of capitalism looks like. And I know many people wouldn’t consider the Republic of Venice to be a capitalist state.

It’s just natural for people to disagree where the cutoff point is. Take England. Everyone agrees 18th century England was capitalist and 11th century England under William the Conqueror was feudal, but people will disagree on where to exactly draw the line in this 7 century timespan. And I think most people would realize going from feudalism to capitalism isn’t an instantaneous process, so there’s at least two lines, one line where before it is definitely feudalism and one line where after it is definitely capitalism with the time span enclosed by the two lines to be where the magic happens. So now, instead of arguing over a line, there’s now 2+ lines to bicker over. And this isn’t even going over a truth in dialectics where everything is constantly in motion so feudalism and capitalism themselves are processes going from one one place to another. The genius of the NEP is Lenin understanding capitalism is just the transitional phase from feudalism to socialism, and there’s nothing stopping a vanguard party or any other form of org to oversee this transitional phase and ensure it isn’t anything more than a transitional phase.