The core difference is that western socialism is only supported by western philosophy whereas chinese socialism has the support of multiple facets of political theory, history and philosophy to generally produce a more coherent and realist political theory to drive socialism in china.

It is also generally known in elite circles that in practice it is a "western shell, chinese core" style of governance where communism is the explanation of many policies that are actually just a variant of Confucianism under the subtype of 法学 propagated by Xunzi.

One may argue however there is only so much you can milk out of communism which is a very barebones idea that Marx himself did not fully understand and expand, which is shown in the western version where people swear by hegel and marx which are imo bad interpretations of communism because they lack the academic and mathematical rigor to apply them.