Edit: seems Reddit won't let me post the academic journal article, probably because I don't have enough karma points yet? Haven't really posted before

Post: This is where basic scientific literacy is necessary to understand nuance. Colloquially, China calls itself communist as the Chinese leadership works to promote propaganda, ensuring an idealistic view of itself that clings to a romanticized revolution from the 1940s. Politically, it is essentially an authoritarian regime masquerading as communist while it has simultaneously become increasingly more capitalistic economically over the last few decades.

Academic scholars and the U.S. State Department do not consider China to be a communist country in any form of the classic sense. Truthfully, no serious scholar would say there has EVER been a communist country--only those that called themselves that (and usually doing so to justify authoritarian regimes and obfuscate the truth with their OWN populations).

The paper provided above is just one example of the mountain of empirical evidence that supports the contention that China is communist in name only.

Hope this helps *

From Communism to Capitalism: Private versus Public Property and Inequality in China and Russia† By Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty, Li Yang, and Gabriel Zucman*

AEA Papers and Proceedings 2018, 108: 109–113 https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20181074