China works, and is a superpower because they aren't communist. China was communist during the Mao years.
Deng Xiaopeng changed China from a brutal communist nation, into a brutal socalist nation using Capitalism-style trade to further their economic prosperity.
China uses the socialist system to get ahead. Not because they are great, but because they use the system against free-market societies. They fix their prices, and monetary values (like a communist nation), but allow some private businesses that sell goods to the West, since not everyone would like to be seen doing business with "communist China".
The most critical aspect of that is the valuation of their currency. It's not tied to every currency in the world, to give it a fair and free value versus the US Dollar, and Euro, but instead weaker currencies that allow China to gain an advantage for businesses paying for cheap Chinese goods.
So again, that's why they are a brutal socialist country, and not a true Soviet style communist country. Communism works in theory, but horribly in practice (as well as socialism) because you can't treat everything with equality. Not every person can, and should work for the sale dollar value on every job. Not everyone should receive social benefits, because we live in a corrupt world that not everyone does right.
Most countries, even the United States, have shades of communism in itself. We have the Welfare system, Social Security, and Public Schools. All of which are socialistic (ie, for every person in the country). Furthermore, I could easily give you a huge list of services that City governments provide in my area for people. And the root idea of socialism is the government providing for everyone, equally in given ways.
Every country has a shade of socialism. The issue is that China is far more socialist than other countries, but not to the point of everyone having everything in common (hence communism).
If you want to see if communism works for entire countries, I suggest you do studies on the GDP, and economic indexes of the following communist countries:
The USSR
China (49-76)
Cuba
North Korea
Easter Europe (Poland, Hungary, East Germany, ect)
Laos (especially look here during the Pol Pot days)
Somalia
Ethiopia
In every given country, it didn't work. In fact, hundreds of millions of people died supporting (and not supporting) their ideologies. Furthermore, none of the given countries have any sort of decent economy for when they were communist. China is the most removed country from communism of the larger countries, which proves that dumping the system leads to prosperity.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
