China calls itself a communist country, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, yet its economy is full of billionaires, stock markets, private companies and consumer brands. So is China still communist? This video asks a question that puzzles visitors, students and China watchers alike, and explores how a country that once abolished private property under Mao Zedong came to embrace market reforms under Deng Xiaoping while keeping the Party firmly in control.
The film looks at both sides of the argument. On one hand, the Communist Party still runs the state, censors the media, controls the army and claims Marxism as its guiding ideology. On the other, the China of today, with its private wealth, inequality and global trade, looks very different from the communism of Mao’s era. The video examines the reforms of the 1980s, the growth of a private sector, the persistence of state-owned enterprises, and the way Xi Jinping has tried to combine market economics with tighter political control.
This question matters because the answer shapes how the world deals with China. Is it a communist power, a state capitalist one, or something new altogether? The video offers a clear guide to the debate, and to what daily life in China tells us about the system its people actually live under.