State ownership of industry doesn't mean a country is socialist. This is really really basic stuff. Is France socialist? Is Britain socialist? Is Japan socialist? Is India socialist?

As for your point about Mao and the Maoist era, China today is nothing like the Maoist era. You can't conflate the capitalism of today with the New Democracy period of the 1950s, those are completely different things. They're not the same on the basis of state ownership or industry, you have to look at it on the basis of class power. The proletariat does not rule China today and hasn't ruled China since the 1970s or so.

Mao of the 1970s is also different from Mao before, so Deng's policies being initiated while Mao was still breathing does not mean that much. Communism isn't just "everything that Mao said and did".