I hear mixed things about countries that are building socialism vs are described as socialist.
Am I overthinking their stages? Especially with a timeline expected for china to hit socialism by their own definition posted a bit back, don't have a link offhand.
It depends on how you define socialism vs communism – a question to which there is no right answer, coz it's a semantic convention.
In Lenin's terminology, they were (actually) socialism and building communism (a classless society)