So I've been putting off writing this for a long time and it'll probably need to be a series, but I've had a difficult time answering challenges from my friends who assert that China is either a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie or of the Bureaucracy (i.e. state capitalists), and that it's a competing imperialist power along with America (and they also say Russia but I can answer that one being stupid on my own).
The problem with China Discourse is that there is a serious paucity of sources dealing with nuanced critiques rather than just "debt trap!" bullshit or whatever, since the objections of liberals and the objections of smarter ultras are very different. At the very least, the sources dealing with this Discourse are less accessible to me.
But now I'm extremely bored and also recently saw Comrade Queermmunist's excellent rebuttal against the claim of China doing imperialism in the DRC, which gave me some hope that Hexbear would be able to answer some of these claims with something at least plausible.
The main objects of concern are the for-profit national businesses causing bureacratic class antagonism, foreign policy in the form of UN peacekeeping contributions, and straightforward imperialism at the base of its supply chain, along with miscellany like this:
https://newworker.us/international/chinas-stock-market-a-lesson-on-what-socialism-is-not/
I don't know, it's all a mess and putting off ideological work causes problems. If nothing else, let this be a practical lesson to you:
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.
It catches up with you and makes things worse in the end.
Surplus-labor is not the principal feature of capitalism; capitalism is the surplus-labor exploitation of the proletariat and the socialization of production with large scale enterprise, along with the competition between capitalists causing the domination of exchange-value (and so the "boundless thirst" of surplus value). All forms of class society feature surplus-value, and communism (classless society) does as well, where this surplus is commonly owned. The state is centralization, and however much capitalist monopoly tends towards this total state ownership cannot exist under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The state is an organ serving the interests of the dominant class, so does not necessarily have "power over the workers" if under the form of the DOTP (unless you want to argue against this fitting the definition of a "state," and this is just semantics), is desirable as a workers dictatorship following the overthrow of the bourgeoisie (where it would be seizing and centralizing capital if properly developed, so yes it should have power over capital), and only undesirable altogether when classes cease to exist.