> It's rule by people who use the brand "communist", but they aren't actually communists in any meaningful sense, not even as in what the word meant to the Soviets. China is very authoritarian, but it is not communist or even socialist.

What does this even mean? The government and the people who run it are the direct political descendants of Mao and the Communists who overthrew the Chinese government in the '40s. They are Communists. Full stop. If the people who call themselves "Communist" and have run the most populous nation in the world for the last 75 years can't be the very definition of "communist," then words have no meaning.