chapotraphouse

Before reform and opening up China was the country on earth with the lowest wealth inequality by far. After reform and opening up, public sectors were opened up for purchase by national and international bourgeoisie, unions were suppressed and left groups were stamped out. Socialist construction in the end is supposed to demolish "the commodity form" and exploitation with it, returning production to the core of producing things that people need and not producing commodities for exchange.

None of these policies on their face help to reach the point of socialist construction, unless you take socialist construction as an overall process - that while it can backslide from time to time - reaches the abolishing of the commodity form in the end. Through the 90s and 00s up until Xis first term in 2013, there appeared to be no hope of China reversing direction from heading towards neoliberal capitalism to socialist construction and fulfilling Dengs promise on a Marxist basis. With the very rapid turn around with Xi implementing policies designed to curb the power of the national and international bourgeoisie, many people have regained hope in Dengs ideas.

"Maoists" don't see China as socialist at all due to the expansion of capitalist production in the Chinese economy. "Dengists" believe China is socialist and point to Dengs justifications on a Marxist basis for the current state of China. Either way China as a socialist state or not is integrated into the imperialist world system as a semi periphery country, with relations of relative exploitation (and development possibilities different to other imperialist countries) to smaller countries and being exploited by larger countries.