Things are not so simple, as I see it. I don't see the actual China as socialist or communist, nor I see them returning to a socialist path. This will become clear later, though this is a very very rough explanation. Things do not really get cheap because they are more abundantly produced (now I am putting my point of view in this whole thing, which is not really standard) because money (gold or precious metals) or value in circulation (I am not counting credit/debt here) also decreases because labor employed in industry (the source) decreases accordingly. So, there is less and less money to expend, credit, instead, expands, and thus debt, because it just cannot be payed. Sectors of economy become glut and bubbles are created.
Pegging money to something of value is also not good. Eventually, it is not enough to keep track of the quantity of things produced, so stagflation happens. Just printing money is also not good, it leads to hyperinflation. A socialist system, ideally, do not have such problems because money is used as grants or as a mean of accounting. This is possible because there is no accumulation of money in the hand of few. But, the world is not ideal, simply because all countries need to trade and the world is nearly all capitalist. So, what happens is that there is a need to accumulate reserves, which generally leads to stagnation. Both USSR and USA suffered from this problem starting in the 70s, but USA could alleviate the problem with the Volker shock, that is, letting credit abound, multiplying reserves. Not so much USSR, given its ideological compromise. Straying off this path led to its doom. Many countries of East Europe acquired large debts with IMF, which led them, in a way or another, to bankrupt. Look for the total debt of countries (not just public only, money flows indent of ownership)you will see that they all of them explode starting around 1980. Soon, shit will hit the fan. China is different case though. It could save itself by crippling the economic conditions on the countryside and making people start to cities, where they could provide cheap work for industries. So, Chinese leadership deliberately sabotaged the most basic epithets of socialism in order to stay in power. They have been trying to improve the conditions on the countryside in the last few years, though, in order to avoid rebellions in the city. Wages raised and so unemployment. The labor is not so cheap anymore, it's getting close to Mexico, officially. There has been some attempt, though not conscious, in setting something similar to precious metal. Crypt currencies somehow are equivalent to mine, where value comes labor employed through maintenance of servers or that employed in the electric system. But, the value it seems, I am not sure if it is regulated by the market, unlike with precious metals. There is a certain scarcity factor that is introduce to make mining more difficult, I cannot, right now see this as really equivalent to a real mine running out. In any case, fluctuations make it not suitable for the people in general to trade. Like with precious metal, there should be some kind of "bank notes", or some similar thing to avoid fluctuations.
