What, so you're saying:

Westerners need to fantasize less about the complete reorganization of society into something utterly unrecognizable and focus more on how to take control over the ugliness that already exists so that they can chart a better course for their countries, as China has.

That being said, it's a huge stretch to compare it to social fascism. While it is political in nature, I feel its merits lie more as a literary and artistic counterbalance to dystopian worldbuilding in the west

Honestly, taking it as its worst, an aesthetic artistic movement is based on aesthetic, and frankly I don't see a lot of harm in that, at all, but it's not good if one is stuck on it, as an end-all

I think its role is similar to that of religion, albeit more benign

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.