I think some of the foundations of your arguments are shaky at best.
Xi is a bad actor. He actively removes opponents, like his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who sat right fucking next to him and was publicly removed. Under Xi, China is asserting ownership of international waters in the South China Sea that have historically been either international waters or even owned by smaller nations. Under Xi, the Uyghers’ and Mongolians’ culture is actively being erased by outlawing local religious and cultural customs. I fail to see how any of these active are “agreeable” or “moderate”. Going back to the Marxist theme, Uyghers and Mongolians are of the working class, too. Why should they be persecuted?
Free speech is the downfall of Marxism??? What? Seriously? The Soviet Union didn’t fall because people were complaining. It fell because their systems weren’t economically viable. While many of the domestic programs of the Soviet Union were excellent, the cost due to size versus productive population was prohibitive. Most of the USSR’s land wasn’t economically viable, but they held things together through totalitarianism, which again, isn’t really empowering the workers. Once they let up on the totalitarianism, the cracks started to show. Maybe if the USSR was smaller and had managed their bureaucracy better, they could have succeeded, but that wasn’t the case. It had nothing to do with freedom of speech. And if the workers can’t voice their needs and desires, that’s depriving workers of power, which is the opposite of Marxism. I don’t think there has been a properly Marxist state.
I don’t know where you’re getting your information and history from or what your path is for your reasoning, but it really doesn’t make sense to me