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It's all aesthetics bro, china is capitalist.
Always the weirdest of ultra arguments. If they are really just "capitalist" or "state capitalist" or whatever, why do they still pretend to be socialist? Why would they want to cause unnecessary friction with the US? They get no benefit from pretending to be socialist, except that maybe a lot of elderly people would be mad if they announced they were capitalist.
Ultras don't have an understanding of dialectics so it makes sense in their head. They unironically think you can push a button and achieve communism.
To play devil's advocate, maybe the same reason the US claims to be democratic?
I suppose it could be (and I guess that would be their angle), but the people of China (as far as I understand) aren't super devoted to communism and so it seems strange to push it so hard, it's not like how Americans are religiously obsessed with their democracy.
Plus it still runs into the same problem as before, it would just cause unnecessary friction around the world for them to claim the label of socialist, and historically, socialist powers have had no problem fighting and arguing amongst themselves (Look at the SIno-Soviet split or China/Vietnam relations for that)
I think I have heard a similar argument before though, it's to "trick the people" which treats Chinese people as lacking agency and is very western chauvinist, like all western arguments.
Not a bad attempt though. Always a good idea to try and understand an argument against our position rather than just dismissing it out of hand. We could be wrong, and China could be an evil state capitalist social imperialist hellhole that lies to the world to trick gullible MLs into...uhh...vague support on internet forums.
I would slightly disagree on the first part, I would say that the vast majority of Chinese people are more strongly devoted to their government/economic model than an average person or the average country, but I agree in that most people of China aren't hardcore communist fanatics like neoliberals sometimes portray them as. Sometimes I think there should be more general support for communism in China, but I also think it could be a blessing in disguise. "Apolitical" people can point out the flaws in all sides, and supporting the status quo in China is a great thing, and the people are very supportive and independent without being a "hive mind". But that does lend credence to your argument, I suppose.
I also agree that we should save mocking neoliberal's arguments for after they are thoroughly broken down and disproven.
Oh yeah, I wasn't very clear. I would imagine China has a lot fewer of the insufferable "I don't like to talk about politics" people than the west, I meant more in a sense of "the government's doing a good job, so I don't really care about their ideology as long as they're doing well." I think this probably a "no investigation, no right to speak" thing for me though, I'm only going off of second and third hand accounts from people, and I imagine somewhere like Shanghai has a very different attitude in general to somewhere like rural Yunnan.
Though if China's government was actually capitalist, we would see the same eroding of social programs and people's QOL we see under all capitalist goverments, not constant improvement, so the argument falls apart on that merit as well.
Shanghai does. They have a reputation (at least online) for being full of libs.