China’s GDP per capita fell for the first 40 years of CCP rule, making it way easier to have constant growth after that period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_China_(191...
#/media/File:GDP_per_capita_development_in_China_1913_to_1950.svg){kind=link}
Developed countries have slow growth because they need to invent the improvements not just copy what works from other countries.
The chart you listed is for the years before the CCP won the civil war in 1949. But agreed that many of the problems overcome were also problems that were created after the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist-controlled_China_(19...
Starting at 1949 is overly generous IMO, but yes the purges that followed didn’t help.