Projection. Westerners hold the vast majority of the debt of developing countries, which they leverage to gain control of their domestic policies and enact exploitative policies that extract as much wealth as possible while the countries themselves are unable to develop beyond being resource colonies. China frequently forgives the debts of developing countries and invests in actual infrastructure and development without making domestic policy demands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy#Domestic_Chinese_experience on some quick preliminary reading it seems like this is generally backed up though time will tell.

Regardless, china does still engage in predatory behaviors, especially with their military, they engage in super aggressive forms of power projection over the parts of the sea they consider “theirs” that other states don’t agree with. As well as the numerous examples of chinese aircraft in international airspace causing problems.

even ignoring these two things, i wouldn’t be surprised if this was a short term loss, long term gain expectation, not dissimilar from theories of venture capital funding.

ok so, i think people confuse the idea of communism, with the concept of lefty communism. There are two types of communism. True blue communism, early soviet union for example. And then what i like to refer to as “pseudo communism” later soviet union, and most other communist states, including china. Most people advocate for a more “true blue communism” which is a different thing.

secondly, most people like to compare between capitalism, and communism, with socialism being somewhere in the middle, where as i think it’s much more accurate to summarize it separately. You have capitalism which is a big player, socialism (communism doesnt count), and then you have authoritarianism. Generally, as a state you exist somewhere in this triangle of economic ideals. You either have a relatively free economy, under capitalism, a collectively owned economy under socialism, and then a centrally owned and planned economy under authoritarianism.

The problem here is that china is more of an authoritarian capitalist state, than it is communist. It doesn’t subscribe to any of the main tenant of communism as is blatantly evidenced by their society. However it does have more authoritarian polices, as evidenced socially and economically.

German nazism was actually done under the socialist party, the funny left leaning one. Fascism itself is apolitical, it doesn’t care what side of the spectrum you’re on, for example stalin might be considering a left leaning fascist. Generally fascism uphold right wing ideals as they tend to be the most simplistic, but that’s more of a secondary force.