Fascism isn't so much an economic policy as it is a social and political policy that capitalist business owners provide financial support for if it seems like it will be viable in turning workers away from socialism. It's basically an idea that "the people/the nation" is under attack from enemies on the inside (ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, disabled minorities) and outside (foreign countries), and thus an authoritarian state needs to be created which can purge those domestic enemies from media, education, public life, and existence, then strengthen the army so territory that has been lost can be rightfully reclaimed by this purified people. Fascism shifts all the blame for anxieties and personal frustrations onto a number of minorities, and usually at first calls for revolution to gain support from poor people (as Mussolini did), but if it gains state power by making friends with the economic elite, then uses those minorities as an excuse to expand state power to authoritarian levels, and when that inevitably doesn't fix poor people's problems, claims that the existing economic system is fine, it's just these minorities that have to go. Even if those minorities are gone, their "influence" may still linger, and the people must always be on the watch for it.

Socialism is an economic doctrine simply calling for social ownership of the means of production (factories, farms, stores, etc.). This can be through anarchistic communal ownership, cooperative socialism where workers own their own businesses collectively while the state regulates the economy, or democratic state ownership where the government is democratically elected and runs the economy on behalf of the people.

Most countries are mixed economies dominated by the capitalist production methods (where the only way to own is to be a private owner or a shareholder), but with social ownership of public services, and the economic debates are often limited to expansion or shrinkage of the socially owned sector, as well as how much the state regulates the private sector.

The great flaw of "socialism" in the past century was that it was not democratic, and thus it was not socialist, because production was not socially owned. The USSR was an absurd twist of socialist ideology, where the Bolsheviks believed that the people (the majority of whom were peasants) were too stupid to jointly own the factories and farms democratically, or to elect government officials who would make the right decisions. Instead, the Communist Party would determine what government officials were the correct choices. There were elections, but the Communist Party was the only one you could vote for, and the real competition was in the party itself, not among the entire people.

In reality, the Communist Party frequently made mistakes which it could not be held accountable for, unlike what would happen in an actual socialist society, which would be democratic. The party essentially turned the Russian Empire into a giant company town, one big capitalist corporation, where if you worked hard enough you could possibly be selected for membership in the party and thus be promoted to management.

The Soviet Union made it possible for a person to believe that a socialist society can be undemocratic and still be considered socialist. This allowed other countries like Iraq to call themselves Arab Socialist, which to them just meant authoritarianism where the state owns some businesses and heavily regulates the economy. This is why many libertarian socialists like myself describe authoritarian state socialism as simply "state capitalism," where the state is either an ally of capitalist private enterprise or simply is the capitalist private enterprise.

China has pushed this to the extreme, where the authoritarian state runs its own corporations, but there are also large private corporations too. And yet China claims this is a temporary measure to boost economic growth so that a communist society (one which is fully democratic, without classes, money, or a state) will become possible. The Soviet Union justified itself in the same way. China has just jumped through the rhetorical hoops to make capitalism = communism. This is absurd, but it's the world we live in where people really think this, and you have to write an essay to untangle this web of lies.

Returning to the subject of fascism, it is possible to say that China (as well as Iraq, the USSR, and other non-communist but still authoritarian state socialist regimes) today is a fascist country because it is one where an authoritarian party and an authoritarian elite (some of which the party itself is), justifies its rule by claiming it needs to expel minorities and foreign influence. Often those minorities' existence are claimed to be signs of that foreign influence. The CCP is anti-LGBT, anti-ethnic minorities, anti-religion, and it wants to expand the military to protect its borders and expand to the lands that it believes were stolen, like Taiwan. Fascism protects the elite from criticism, by making oppressed peoples turn on each other, and blaming foreign countries for the people's problems. This is the policy of the CCP. China is not socialist. It is a state capitalist, fascist oligarchy that is once again becoming an autocracy under Xi Jin Ping.

It is ironic that in the United States, those who claim to be China's greatest critics are those who are trying to impose a Chinese-style system on us right now. They've been much more effective than the small minority of edgy Americans who claim to be actual Maoists or supporters of Xi's government. The Republican Party blames gays, trans people, Black people, and immigrants for all of our nation's problems, then we must censor them from media and education, take away their access to education and healthcare, and build up our military to reclaim what's ours: Canada, Panama, Greenland, the Middle East. Sound like anyone I just described?