riding the coattails of industrialization along with every single other country that was involved in WW2

This does not cover what China experienced. Following its establishment, the PRC (from 1950-1957) had over 50% reductions in infant and child mortality and crude death compared to the old system of semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism which the U.S. attempted to enforce and uphold by financing the Kuomintang and a growth in life expectancy (from 1950-1980) which a study calls “among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history.”