If you are talking about the formation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), then you have to realize the numerous levels at play here. There's Chinese versus Chinese, Chinese versus Europe, Chinese versus Japan during that time period. To simplify the attitudes of Chinese versus those factions as mistrust is misleading. Rather numerous founding members of the CCP studied abroad in Japan, and shared western ideals of government (be it democracy or communism) at various points in their lives.
Now what caused them to turn to Marxism-Leninism as opposed to more democratic ideals? The simple answer is that they saw the alternatives as more talking rather than acting, as in the case of those trying to form a republic. In the post-Qing landscape, you had traditionalists who were trying to maintain the Confucian society (yes the same kind that just collapsed), and those seeking to form a representative government. Keep in mind that the founding leaders of the CCP saw first hand at the ineptitude of the Qing officials, and the post-Qing republic's bureaucracy of local governments; in both cases, a ruling class using their communities to benefit themselves, the elite over the others. So a representative government would eventually be compromised, it's not a question of if, but when. For the CCP, these governments are not true representations of the will of the people, because the systems rely on small ruling classes.
If you were alive during this time and keeping track, then you would realize that the Chinese ruling classes (Qing, the republic) in this time period weren't doing so well; they can't handle foreign policy (Century of Humiliation and Unequal Treaties along with military defeats), they only serve their own interests (president turned despot Yuan Shikai), and doesn't actually empower the people of China (see above).
So to say that just because Marxism-Leninism came from a European school of thought then the Chinese would naturally be opposed is a bit simplistic. They were actually very attuned to the notion that the economic interests/exploitation of China by foreign powers directly influenced how the Qing, the post-Qing republic, and the Chinese people themselves conducted their affairs. They are inherently selfish in the eyes of the CCP, as in everyone's looking out for themselves and only themselves rather the country. So Communism offered a way to take those selfish economic interests out of the governmental affairs.
Lastly, for a rough parallel, the United States around the same time period saw corporations, private citizens, and private enterprises exert large influences over Congress and other branches of government, local to federal. The CCP saw that in China as well, private interests were using whatever form of government as a means of advancing their own goals.
Source: From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920-1927 By Hans J. van de Ven
The PRC (people's republic of China) was founded in 1949, after the Chinese Communist Party had already beaten the Nationalists. In the "early PRC", Communism was widely accepted, made popular among the peasantry by the land reforms carried out by the Communists.
Is your question asking "how was communism viewed in it's infancy before the Chinese Civil War?", or "how well did the average Chinese person accept communism after the founding of the PRC?".