From the beginning of the split until 1971 they had good foreign policy, all the epic-fail stuff came after when Zhou Enlai who was basically Deng's mentor was calling the shots. By that point Mao was going senile, the GPCR had been ended prematurely in 1969 and Lin Biao and his supporters had been deposed by Zhou and his supporters most likely (I know Lin Biao got charged with trying to coup Mao but there pretty much no evidence that he actually did)
I think that's a legitimate critique of not only Deng but the entire orientation of the CCP during the Sino-Soviet split. China was wrong on nearly every foreign policy question, beginning during the GPCR and continuing into the Deng era. However, it's important to recognize that these policies, no matter how erroneous and disastrous, had material roots in legitimate concerns, particularly the military aggression and hostility of the USSR during the Brezhnev era. In hindsight, the USSR didn't launch an assault on China, but the CCP had to evaluate those concerns as serious.
About Deng Xiaoping though, I still think he was rightfully the no. 2 target during the GPCR. Look at all the positive aspects of the Mao era which were undone by him and the $400 million worth of aid that he gave to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan among other things. China has him to thank for its modernisation to him but it also has him to thank for all the wealth inequality, sweatshops, lack of health care etc. that came with it. It's good he decided not to go down the Gorbachov road in 1989, but still.
Yeah, their support of the striking workers and fighting against corruption and such have indeed been good signs.
That's a fair view. You should check out the writings of Deng Xiaoping. I was surprised by how much he reads like Stalin vis-a-vis Lenin, i.e. the person who actually had to pick up the pieces via policymaking after the original revolutionary died. I suppose there are three views of market socialism: capitalism by another name, revisionism moving towards capitalism (i.e. glasnost, perestroika), or a Marxist-Leninist method of economic organization used for revolutionizing a country's productive forces to build 'higher socialism'. You don't think the CCP's recent economic overhauls aren't an example of their dedication to the latter?
Interesting article on China you've got, I don't think I completely agree with it though. I think I'm somewhere between your view and the view of China being a full-scale capitalist imperialist power. I see it as having been state-capitalist since Deng's reforms, however I don't view state-capitalism as automatically being the doomsday though. I think China's main problem isn't the fact that it's state-capitalist but rather that it's not moving forward from state-capitalism toward socialism but staying still as state-capitalism. That's obviously better than moving toward market-capitalism like the USSR and the People's Democracies did and I think the crackdown on Tianmanen stopped China from going the same road, but the material conditions that led to Zhao Ziyang and Tiananmen will still remain as long as China's in its present state. I guess I differ from others in that I think Chinese socialism can still possibly be salvaged.
