democracy = rule of the people, voting is just one way (not necessarily an effective one) by which that rule is exercised

china has a kind of consultative democracy where people are literally asked about what they want and think, and the government runs things based on that - if the local administrator fails to provide, another one is put in his place, and so on

this is far more effectively democratic than voting every X years, as in the latter voters are actually more like consumers ("here's a list of what we're offering, pick one that is closer to what you want") than actual participating citizens ("tell me what you want so we can see a way to provide it")

that said, yea, they actually do vote as well, but just for the legislature

honestly, it's a great mix, not without its flaws obviously, but has worked wonders

edit: also the vast majority (over 70%) of the chinese definitely think 1) democracy is good and 2) they live in a democracy, which are much better stats than what you see in america for instance

They do vote for some things but otherwise they practice the mass line (although I don't that term was actually used in between Mao and Xi, Xi has revived the use of the term). Think about a party official going to a village and saying "what kinds of problems do you have here? What could I do to help?" And then actually following up on that, something like this is shown in the PBS documentary which I think is called China's War on Poverty.