China is very much communist. It's very different than 19th and 20th century communist state, but the US looks very different than a 19th and 20th century capitalist state.
The Chinese governmental structure is very much communist. The ideals in the propaganda are communist. The goverment has strong control of their citizens, controlling how many children they can have, which city they can live in, etc.
You're looking for the term Totalitarian. All Communists are Totalitarian, not all Totalitarians are Communists. They've long since done away with the pretenses of Communism.
> They've long since done away with the pretenses of Communism.
They've kept all their pretenses of communism.
We aren't a pure capitalist society, or a pure republic, or democracy. We still use those words to describe ourselves. It's important that we do use those words to describe ourselves. The phrase 'all men are created equal' in the declaration of independence aided the abolitionist argument, even if at no point did the goverment treat all men as equal.
The ideals of communism still have an impact on China's goverment, culture and even economy. Just because they fall short of a perfect communist society doesn't mean they are not communist.
> Do workers own the means of production? No. Are they going toward that? No. It's not "communist" then.
Newsflash: workers never owned the means of production in any communist state. They were told they would, but they were subjected to compulsory work to cater to the communist regime's elite goals while owning nothing at all.
That sort of bait and switch is pretty much the hallmark of every single communist regime since the very beginning.