As someone who used to be one of those people, there is an emotional appeal to thinking that Deng betrayed socialism.

For us in the west who have little hope for socialism succeeding here, we have to look outwards for positive examples. As it turns out, all examples of actually existing bolshievism are dead, even if you aknowledge that dengist reforms were necessary to modernise china and survive in a post-soviet world. This is a bitter pill to swallow.

What it took for me to get out of thinking was to understand that Chinese socialism does not exist to satisfy my dreams of utopia. Once the emotional aspect faded away, I could analyse the situation in china properly. Learning materialism by actually reading Engels and listening to lectures from a Chinese professor allowed me to finally have a sensible base level understanding of China.