Pretty much the only thing westerners can agree on when it comes to China is that authoritarianism has been getting worse in the last five years.

It’s getting worse. Before the recent change to the Politburo succession rules the Party was run on a College of Cardinals basis. There is now clearly a Pope, and an incipient cult of personality. It’s pretty mild and there are as yet no actual believers but the cant people must mouth in order to get ahead politically and at high levels of business has been disseminated. If you feel like speaking out against it there are escalating levels of consequences. If you’re interested Christopher Balding and T. Greer are both good.

baldingsworld.com @BaldingsWorld scholars-stage.blogspot.com @Scholars_Stage

It could be less authoritarian despite the economic prosperity. Or it could just be complicated.

It's still actual communist rule -- by the Communist Party of China, no less.

It's rule by people who use the brand "communist", but they aren't actually communists in any meaningful sense, not even as in what the word meant to the Soviets. China is very authoritarian, but it is not communist or even socialist. Fascism would be an accurate description, though, as Mussolini himself defined it ("Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.")

> It's rule by people who use the brand "communist", but they aren't actually communists in any meaningful sense, not even as in what the word meant to the Soviets. China is very authoritarian, but it is not communist or even socialist.

What does this even mean? The government and the people who run it are the direct political descendants of Mao and the Communists who overthrew the Chinese government in the '40s. They are Communists. Full stop. If the people who call themselves "Communist" and have run the most populous nation in the world for the last 75 years can't be the very definition of "communist," then words have no meaning.

The government and the people who run it are literally jailing actual Mao-worshipping communists right now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-...

The reason why China isn't meaningfully communist is because their economy isn't communist, or even socialist, in any meaningful sense. There are a lot of govt-owned companies, yes, but they're run as capitalist enterprises. Again, what this resembles most is fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, just less bloodthirsty. What it does not resemble is the USSR, or China under Mao.

>If the people who call themselves "Communist"

North Korea confirmed to be a democracy?

Clearly not. They are ruled by the Workers' Party of Korea, and it is a self-described revolutionary and socialist state.

And since we were originally talking about Chinese communists, it's interesting to note that they have been the chief supporters of North Korea's government.

It's very hard to estimate how large the public sector is. Low-ball estimates would put it at around 30% which is a tad more than most in the socialism-leaning Europe. That is when you only count enterprises that are officially state owned. If you loosen it up 50% or even 60% isn't unreasonable (check out work of Derek Scissors).

The communism vs fascism question is always though. Soviet Russia can easily be described as both communist and strongly fascistic.

Chinese economy is a good example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

To follow up on your quote:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Giovanni Gentile