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That sounds like a very classically Hobbesian sort of argument that the mere deprivation of socialist guarantees and the subsidence of the fastest GDP rate in human history would turn a collective society into a bunched up ball of xenophobia. I think it's important not to attribute undue weight onto minority positions, unless they can be substantively demonstrated as being a majority view.

The issue in the DDR was specifically that, following capitalist restoration, with the left politically censored and historiographically maligned, it was inevitable that people would move rightwards as the only visible alternative, which is precisely what is happening slow boiling frog-style across Europe and the West. The issue in the post-USSR states is that with the capitalist regimes in the former SSRs' legitimacy contingent on being a "superior" choice to its socialist predecessor, similarly, the only alternative was rightwards. This was compounded in the non-RSFSR SSRs, where national historiography was rewritten so that the entire experience of being in the USSR was warped into a "victimhood" narrative of "occupation" under the "Soviet empire." The resistors of that Soviet regime were naturally the fascist puppet freaks in WW2 and this is the primary reason why Ukraine was hijacked (against the consent of the majority) by Neo-Nazism.

History and context matters, which I suppose is why they dubbed the analysis historical materialism. The principal issue with Maoism (which is to say, not MZT) is that it is idealism in service of socialism. A fine idea, but it's just that. I take issue with the "woe is me, living in modern China is suffering" narrative because no man is an island, including China. It's evident that the West is unable to copy-paste the same ideological propaganda of material disparity it used against the USSR in the New Cold War and spamming "communism no blue jeans" due to China's position as the world factory, so it gets by with gaslighting about China's economic growth (the orientalist assumption is that a single half year of negative growth, a mere "technical recession" in the West, would immediately cause the CPC to lose its legitimacy, always framed as the "mandate of heaven" by some China "expert" talking head, and be "finally" spontaneously overthrown so that the West is finally rid of this meddlesome priest).

History shows that socialist welfare is less than relevant so long as the state is capable of being subverted and all that work is capable of being undone. Most 20th century socialist states met all those qualities that give Maoists the starry-eyed glimmer, yet those states don't exist anymore. To assume that China can achieve that "socialism in one country" label and become "Fortress Communism" is frankly chauvinistic conceit that ignores the lessons provided by 20th century AES.

It's equally non-dialectical to pull one's hair at China's socioeconomic condition without considering that China doesn't need to outdo itself, just others in relativistic terms. When the rest of the world is in the shitter, it’s unrealistic to expect China to wholly avoid getting some mud splashed on it. Europe and North America's economic conditions are far more dire than anything looming on China's horizon, which bears reminding.

The lesson from the hubristic notion of the "end of history" is that history never ends. China's goal should be to ensure that it can create the domestic and global conditions for a sustainable and long-lasting socialist socio-economy. That involves the primary contradiction of imperialism. So long as progress is made towards that goal, however slow it is, I see no reason why the "things are so bad in China, it's literally Taiping 2.0 right now" narrative should be given oxygen or credence.