I would also suggest that some of the support is in the form of challenging questionable and sometimes outright racist/xenophobic Western narratives on China. Red Scare propaganda is real, and has existed for generations, so regardless of whether China is good or bad, you would be an idiot to simply take the US State Department's position as legitimate. All of that is completely aside from whether or not China is worth supporting for reasons A, B, or C above.

Pretty much all of the above for me. B with the qualifier that I just think the leadership is not as cartoonishly evil/stupid as the Western ruling class and the systems being put in place and claims being made by the state have a path to socialism. It's not like the USA, where nothing is taught about socialism during education unless you go out of your way during university. I do think 1917 was the last truly realistic chance, which didn't pan out mostly due to momentum (capitalist wealth stolen from other nations for decades/centuries and reinvested in the destruction of revolutions). It's just that not all hope is lost.

The ruling class of the West seems to be a mix of (1) too stupid to realize their class will eventually bring about the Fourth Reich and very possibly end the world and (2) smart enough to approximately realize it but mostly stupid enough to not be interested in addressing it as anything other than individuals with NZ bunkers/WALL-E ambitions.

Also I just saw your handle and if you deal with that wanted to recommend benzoyl peroxide. I dealt with that (diagnosed) for a couple of years before finding this dermatology clinic's report from the 80s. Cleared it up in a couple weeks.

Just anecdotally, I worked for a short period of time in China, and was simply stunned by the level of public investment that was occurring. There is so much we could do if we had the political power to do anything. Also, my colleagues were pretty open about their collective sigh of relief that the nightmare their parents went through was long over, their anxiety that it could return, and their enthusiasm for the current path. Of course this was a rather nonrandom sample of tech workers, so there is that. My opinion is that I have no idea if China will end up being AES, but at least it represents an intention to do so, and an alternative to the dominant system.