I don’t think westerners put a lot of stock in China’s claim to be communist, nor do I think many westerners would deny that it’s an ethnonationalist country.
> China serves as home to 56 official ethnic groups. The largest group, the Han, makes up over 92% of China's vast population, and it is the elements of Han civilization regraded as "Chinese culture"
>Xi Jinping has celebrated majority Han culture as the timeless “soul of the nation”, gradually shifting ethnic policy from formal inclusion of 56 ethnic groups to cultural nationalism. Influential political economist Hu Angang called fusion a means of making China a strong and prosperous state again, while anthropologist Ma Rong considers “teaching barbarians” a revival of imperial tradition. These arguments emerged following mass violence in 2009, sparked by the murder of Uighur labourers by Han colleagues in a Guangdong factory accused of using coerced labour.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/05/china-...
[1]https://www.crownrelo.com/intl/en/article/four-toughest-plac...
[2]https://thediplomat.com/2023/06/riding-the-tiger-ethno-natio...
[3]https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2023/03/02/1160441919...