Yeah, The Economist regularly writes these articles that spend half the time praising the intense competition in certain sectors of the economy and half the time bemoaning the influence of state-owned enterprises (or other CCP instruments) in others. It seems to vary a lot by specific industry.

Which is owned by the Government

> China is no longer communist, it's this weird hybrid of capitalism with heavy government controls and heavy censorship.

I think the established term is 'state capitalism'.

In some areas China is even becoming more liberal than the EU.

Look at DeepSeek.

In my mind, Communism as exhibited by modern China is more defined by the dictatorship style, than the economy style, not that economy is independent of it. So, I'd consider the chinese communism vs western democracy a more enlightnening contrast.