Marx: Communism is the result of a process that requires capitalism.
China: does some capitalism in order to progress towards communism
Western Marxists: China is state capitalist, not communist.
Whatever China's system is, it's not capitalism as the bourgeoise democracies of the West understand it. The surplus value produced by the Chinese proletariat goes overwhelmingly towards improvements to their quality of life, the state plans the expansion of Chinese capital more directly than any other extant system, and perhaps most importantly, the bourgeoise themselves don't have massive pull over the government the way ours do. Xi recently told Jack Ma to get fucked when he tried to IPO a new company, because it was determined that that IPO wasn't in the best interests of China as a whole - could you imagine Joe fucking Biden doing that to Elon Musk?
Marx: Communism is the result of a process that requires capitalism.
China: does some capitalism in order to progress towards communism
Western Marxists: China is state capitalist, not communist.
Whatever China's system is, it's not capitalism as the bourgeoise democracies of the West understand it. The surplus value produced by the Chinese proletariat goes overwhelmingly towards improvements to their quality of life, the state plans the expansion of Chinese capital more directly than any other extant system, and perhaps most importantly, the bourgeoise themselves don't have massive pull over the government the way ours do. Xi recently told Jack Ma to get fucked when he tried to IPO a new company, because it was determined that that IPO wasn't in the best interests of China as a whole - could you imagine Joe fucking Biden doing that to Elon Musk?