I really dont understand why so many people feel the need to post comments online distinguishing that China is not communist.
Its a disgusting authoritarian regime just like every other self proclaimed communist country in history.
There are multiple species of authoritarian tyrannies; fascism is just one of them. I think people get in trouble trying to generalize and apply fascism to places it doesn't fit. "Communist are fascists" might be one of the text book instances of that problem.
Mildly amusing thingie - a Bulgarian dissident's dissidenting involved writing a book about fascism (titled, for clarity, Fascism) which was really an oblique critique of the communist regime. It got past the censors and was published and then fairly quickly recalled. He later became Bulgaria's first post-communist president.
Nicaragua is a great example of this. The Sadinistas lost power through free elections in which the US interferred. Now that the Sadinistas are back in power, the freedom of their elections has been rapidly decreasing.
"Communist" as a lable has been so misused and unclearly defined for so long that it is mostly useless as a descriptive term.