Difficult. I think by the time you get to Deng, there’s too much of a consensus within the Party that there has to be a different direction on the economy. There are differences on how market-oriented or how fast to pursue economic growth but too much of a consensus.
In OTL, Deng’s reforms took a beating from within the Party post-Tiananmen. But even then, it’s a case of Deng’s internal critics wanting him to slow down rather than wanting to switch to a Soviet system.
You would need a POD where either Deng does not come to power or Hua has his own ideas of how he wants to do things or both.
China's economic reforms were also much more gradual and decentralized than the in the end of the eastern bloc. One of Deng's important decisions was the choice to allow provincial and local leaders to experiment with different policy schemes. Unfortunately policy experimentation has tempered off under Xi Jinping. Deng only began by de-collectivizing agriculture in the early '80s, farmers had a dual track price system where they were required to produce a certain quota for the state, but any excess agricultural production was subject to normal market forces. Reforms affecting the rest of the economy like mergers and privatizations of small to medium sized and/or inefficient State Enterprises were only introduced later on over the course of the 1990s and '2000s.
The comparison between China and the Soviet bloc's trajectory is worthwhile, the CCP has devoted vast amounts of time and energy to studying how and why the USSR fell. Ideological stagnation is one the more commonly cited factors, which is part of why there's so importance placed on stuff like
Xi Jinping Thought, the
China Dream, and the
12 Core Socialist Values. The Soviet political system was too inflexible to tolerate any piecemeal reforms in the '70s and '80s, so the former eastern bloc in Europe was forced to disassemble their command economies all at once, leading to the recession in the '90s that China didn't see.
The experience of European privatization was by no means homogenous, but generally the countries that went through a faster, more aggressive form of shock therapy were economically better off afterwards. Poland, for example, went through a short, sharp recession during its privatization process, but Romania's economic were much more gradual and piecemeal, with different results. Poland, the Baltic States are one end of the spectrum that chose the most rapid forms of political reform and economic shock therapy, compared to the other extreme of countries where the communists lost power later ('92 in Albania), or there were basically no political or economic opening (Belarus, Turkmenistan, Moldova to some extent).
China still has somewhat wacky/nonexistent property rights though, the Houkou system makes its hard for economic migrants to get around. Rural people from the inland provinces migrate to larger coastal cities for economic reasons, but they can only access social services like education and healthcare in the rural areas where their household are officially registered. Without a Houkou registration, migrants in urban areas live in a grey area somewhat analogous to undocumented people in the US, migrant workers' children are often unable to register at urban public schools.
So far the party has decided to hold onto the system on the reasoning that the Houkou system makes slums less of problem than in other industrializing countries by restricting migration, and having a plot of land to farm and live off of provides a kind of safety net in case people lose their jobs in the city. The economy would probably benefit it people were able to buy/sell their farmland or use it as collateral for a loan, but the party is afraid of social instability caused by destitute, propertyless urban workers if a major economic crash occurs.