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In 1930s Germany there was one party, the Nazi's. But they weren't communist, they were fascist. Same for Franco's Spain. One party does not = communist, regardless of what they say. In a communist country people like Jack Ma would be living in a small apartment and working at some factory job somewhere. Instead, he's a billionaire. Did he really control his company? Heck no! He did what he did under total government control, to advance their demands. But he got rich nonetheless as the "owner" of the company.

And communist countries don't have rich people (well, rich people who aren't in the government anyway, they are all rich as Midas but they're the only ones). Nope, a favored group of people who own,run and profit from "private" business but only with express approval and under total control of the government is fascist, not communist.

I lived in Communist Poland for two years during the days of Solidarnosc'. And I have visited China and Russia.

China is a communist country. The fact that it allows a modified form of capitalism to exist does not change how the country is run. The Communist Party is small compared to the general population, i.e., 90 million compared to 1.3 billion. But it controls every facet of life, including the economy. The Chinese communists are allowing the economy to be more capitalist as a way to fund their total control over the country. The Chinese economy faces some real challenges even without Trump's "trade war."

"Overall growth is slowing – to around 6 to 7% pa – and there is concern that China could be headed for a Japanese style period of stagnation and/or a crash rather than orderly rebalancing."

"A key uncertainty is whether the build-up of debt incurred in order to finance the boom in investment will lead to a financial crisis. Investment in property infrastructure and heavy industry was financed by borrowing, much of it incurred to ‘shadow banks’ credit institutions outside of mainstream banking. Chinese aggregate debt had reached 255% of GDP by mid-2016, up from 141% in 2008 (and as against 188% in emerging markets as a whole). Some estimates are much higher (around 300%). The fear now is that, as the economy slows, debts can no longer be serviced and there will be defaults which, could, as after 2008 crisis in Western economies, drag down major lending institutions. So far, state intervention to support weak institutions and continued growth stimulus have headed off disaster. But the price has been the postponement of necessary reform. We simply do not know if there will be a soft or hard landing."