The China duality: It seems that China is a capitalist country when people want to discuss their achievements, and a communist country when they want to discuss their faults.
It is quite clear, however, that most analyses of their economic successes don’t add that nuance and come to the predetermined conclusion that I outlined above: the success is due completely to adopting western capitalism, and the negatives are due to the elements that don’t fit that mold.
Shift to markets, stringent capital controls, consolidation of massive state owned enterprises, encouragement of joint ventures between Chinese companies, western companies, and the government, lack of stringent IP laws/rights.
Some of the above is “capitalistic” and some of it is not. Commentators have been predicting China would continue to shift towards becoming more capitalist or fail for decades and they’ve been continuously proven wrong. China has developed a completely different model of development from the western consensus, but people still want to have their cake and eat it too.
Yes, there are lots of reforms that contributed to their rise, but adopting elements of a market economy and engaging in open trade with the rest of the world were key elements. Reforming their centrally planned economy wouldn't have resulted in the same outcome without the those.
But yes, I totally agree that you don't need to be 100% capitalist to benefit from having a market economy. Even the US's economy is ~15% public sector. Usually when multiple ideologies are competing, there's elements of truth all around.
They are capitalism since private sector is allowed and encouraged. They are an authoritarian country as there is no democracy and there can be a single political party. Why is that so difficult to understand?
They call their country communist because they can't afford to undermine the legacy of the communist party by admitting that they made huge mistakes in the past.
A ton of the achievement has to do with Western investments. For example, Apple spent $275 billion in the late 2010s to build up Chinese tech manufacturing capabilities. That's one company doing a 5X larger investment than the "historic" CHIPs bill signed by Biden this year.
Western FDI has definitely played a major role in China’s growth, yes.
Note that my comment doesn’t call that into question though, only that the conversation around chinas success is almost always grossly oversimplified to suit ideological agendas.
