It's also an oppressive police state where huge portions of the population live in poverty and endure awful working conditions. Oh and they're actively engaged in genocide against a minority ethnic group. But sure if we just ignore all the downsides it's great.

I think you must have inferred something from my comment that I didn’t actually say. I didn’t say every communist country ceases to exist. I also didn’t say that communism can’t generate a large economy.

What I said was that it has a 100% failure rate of achieving its goals, where those goals are economic equality, and elimination of poverty and class divisions. Most open pro-communists today have an additional goal of increasing access to basic human rights which communism has historically failed at as well. I did mention that some communist states have failed outright.

In the case of China, which you alluded to, note that China deliberately weakened their communism in the 90s as part of a series of economic reforms that introduced capitalist principles designed to stimulate growth. Specifically, agriculture was de-collectivized, Chinese business were opened to foreign investment, permission was granted for entrepreneurs to start businesses, state-owned industries were privatized, and many price controls were removed. By 2005, the private sector was responsible for 70% of China’s GDP. There is no reason to believe that China’s economy would be anywhere near as large as it is today absent these reforms.

But is that what you personally want out of your system? A large economy? Is that what matters most?

In what world is a country with billionaires and an autocratic ruling class in which the workers decidedly do not control the means of production, "socialist"?