Is China (the PRC, not Taiwan) a communist country?
The Slate article linked to by Christopher Beam sums it up pretty nicely and matches with what I’ve read elsewhere. I’m just old enough to remember Nixon visiting China. Since that time I’ve seen China grow and blossom into an international powerhouse of capitalism. However, just as there are different varieties of communism, there are different varieties of capitalism. It is perhaps more true to say that China is a variety of fascism, or semi-fascist (as a degree). The state owns certain industries, which are capitalist in nature. The Chinese are smart enough to have figured out that competition is the natural way of things and if they’re ever to be a real world power then they’ve got to compete with the major industrial powers that have traditionally outpaced them in technology. Therefore, they’ve changed their economic policies to be more outward-looking and less inward-facing. As a result, China has adopted many capitalist policies while still holding to some communist tenets and p
