Socialism in China began with a handful of guys in a dingy back room, and grew to be the (arguably) most powerful political force in the world, and (inarguably) the force responsible for eliminating more poverty than anything else in human history. They began with NOTHING and built a society that today looks like a science fiction movie to us Americans. Socialism in Russia began with a third world country where most people lived in huts and couldn't read, and within a couple decades put the first human being in space, the second largest economy in the entire world, and many more achievements, all while suffering an IMMEDIATE invasion by over a dozen capitalist countries that triggered a horrible civil war, then suffered the main brunt of WW2, losing TONS of productive industry in the process and sacrificing over 20 million of its people to defeat the scourge of fascism and save the world from its grip. They began with NOTHING and built the 2nd largest economy in the world that never saw a single day's peace, as the capitalist world was constantly attacking them. The notion that socialism has no conception of how wealth is created or what is productive is so ludicrous for someone in the US, which is now barely creating ANYTHING productive while socialism with Chinese characteristics creates most of the productive wealth in the world, that it is seriously almost implausible someone could believe it.