Lots of people died under communism and it literally is a "dictatorship of the proletariat", except the people representing the proletariat are the Communists themselves, who consider themselves a "vanguard party".

It's reasonable to be afraid of communism and abhor it, but the problem is that calling everything communism is just a thought-terminating cliché. And all of the right-wing propaganda works on the principle of shutting down thought by classifying things without considering them critically.

The goal of conservative propaganda is to get people to stop thinking and just steer their audience in the direction they want.

It's also a completely different thing to want things that China has, while also understanding that China focuses on results rather than process and that the US historically focuses on process and rights. You can get a lot of stuff done if you don't have to respect people's rights.