RE: "...a bigger contributor to the massive improvement in (purely economic) standard-of-living for most Chinese"
Hong Kong's prosperity influenced China to transform into a freer economic system. The roads, schools, and other infrastructure built from China's centrally-planned economy would've been much more affordably built with a higher and growing GDP; instead, doing those projects shifted much-needed resources during its Great Famine and many other periods of starvation into unnecessary and ultimately lethal projects that caused the deaths of a lot of people.
"The communism that took resources from the urban coast and built roads, schools, and other infrastructure in rural areas was more likely a bigger contributor to the massive improvement in (purely economic) standard-of-living for most Chinese."
That is just shockingly untrue, intellectually dishonest, and utterly asinine. I have no clue why your post was up-voted so highly. China reformed its communistic system and embraced capitalism toward the late 70s. GDP growth has grown staggeringly since, and is the fastest growing large economy caused by its move toward a freer market system. Communism hardly caused a dent for its GDP growth between the 50s to the late 70s [1], but instead, caused widespread famine, the greatest destruction to real estate in human history, and deaths in the millions due to massive starvation. [2]
The graph below basically discredits communism contributing anything to the "massive improvement in (purely economic) standard-of-living for most Chinese". [3]
Hong Kong's prosperity influenced China to transform into a freer economic system. The roads, schools, and other infrastructure built from China's centrally-planned economy would've been much more affordably built with a higher and growing GDP; instead, doing those projects shifted much-needed resources during its Great Famine and many other periods of starvation into unnecessary and ultimately lethal projects that caused the deaths of a lot of people.