Genuine question so please don’t hate on me. It seems to me that china now is more of a mixed market than a planned economy. Billionaires and class disparities definitely still exist in China and it seems like american communists almost romanticize china while ignoring obvious flaws in its system, only because they (rightfully) hate america and america hates China. China also supplies all of the world’s exploitative corporations with the vast majority of their goods. While China is probably better than the capitalist economies of the west, I don’t understand why a lot of people seem to hold it in the same regard as the USSR.
A planned economy is very much a tool and a useful one at that, but thinking it is a requirement is dogmatic.
One of my hot takes is that a market economy is a tool that is sometimes useful as well. Of course, it would be absolutely fucking ridiculous to plan 100% of the entire economy around market mechanisms, especially with modern computing and communication resources available to you, but who would ever want to do that anyway? :/