>>389042
So you can go into semantics which kind of miss the forest for the trees, whether or not China legitimately fitting into someone's version of "communism" does not take away that they ARE an a competing great power that does ostensibly bad things and only seek to profit off the West if they can't outright dismantle our systems. That's not to say communism is exclusive from being evil, but they clearly are evil so why bother trying to split hairs about if they're communist or not. But like another anon said, if you look at their policies and what they do. They control the means of production. They control all private property. You can not OWN a home in China, you are technically leasing it from the state for a few decades. The Hukou family registry system enforces a caste system based on where you live - literal actual systemic discrimination, different laws apply to you depending on if you were born in other places, you are refused enterprise or work or even freedom to travel depending on where you were born. The state controls you. That's what communism is. Not even you are your own personal property. Of course it isn't Mao anymore, there are more individual freedoms than that, but that's only because they let the people do that and they control them in other ways - WeChat being so central to daily life, but also unabashedly tracking nearly everything users do. Social credit system. The great firewall. Banning foreign competition so they can make their own home-grown version of whatever. They say they do XYZ, communists say they do XYZ, and they say they're communists, so if it quacks and walks like a duck...
At the same time I'm not going to really give a shit if they give me nice anime tiddies in vidya. But I just am aware that it's less genuine than if it came from Japan (even though Japan is fucking up slowly at the moment). Chinese games now like Genshin or Wukong are a form of soft power meant to put a very subtle but positive impression of China on people. Their games don't have to actually be propaganda, it can just be
a thing from China and it has an above-zero benefit for their reputation.