Let me tell you how Communism worked in the USSR and its satellite countries in Eastern Europe.
You were essentially a slave.
The type of education you received depended on the whims of the big shots in the Communist party. If you caused them any problems, you'd regret it fast. They could take away your house and relocate you. They could assign you to another job.... a horrible, miserable, demeaning job.
Just to travel, you had to get permission from the government. Police could (and often would) stop people on the street, and demand to know where they were going, what they were doing, etc. This was serious. No "to serve and protect" in force here. It was more like "to bully and intimidate".
Since everyone had to work many people were assigned jobs that amounted to slow psychological torture. A favorite punishment in prison was to make the inmates move a pile of stones from one end of the yard to another. When they finished, they would have to put them back in their starting place. And that would just go on and on.
Now, imagine a variation of that... something that is totally non-productive and meaningless, is now your life's work. Many people had such jobs. Realizing they would always toil away at something completely pointless, they would turn to alcohol or some other vice to alleviate the horrid monotony.
Students often had to sit at their desk with their hands folded BEHIND the backs of their chairs. This was to give the teacher total control and make students feel powerless. If you caused trouble or questioned anything, you would be sent to a dead-end school where you would be prepared for some menial factory job.
You only received a suitable job if you were in the good graces of the Communist party. Since Communism needs, figuratively speaking, lots of indians and just a handful of cowboys, schools would purposely stifle the creative and gifted students. This is because bright people would not be satisfied with the limitations of the Communist world. Hence, they would try to "dumb you down".
To say China is capitalist is only partly true. Most enterprises are still owned by the state. More precisely, China is the world's biggest sweatshop. Hundreds and hundreds of millions toiling away for the aggrandizement of the Communist party bosses, who live like feudal lords while the average person lives like a serf.