Just from the opinions and arguments I’ve seen firsthand over the past decade, I think the current positive view on China that at least some MLs have today is comparatively recent and largely based on the recent infrastructure development, anti-poverty, and anti-corruption campaigns the CPC has successfully carried out demonstrating that the communist bloc is back in power in the party. Even as recent as just six years ago it seemed like “the CPC is a liberal party where communists are marginalized or nonexistent” was the dominant stance I saw people in left spaces taking. Back in 2017 I got told directly “there are no communists left in the CCP [sic]” after saying it looked like there was an internal conflict between the liberal bloc and communist bloc and that it seemed like the communists might be coming back into power. Even here there was more cynicism early on, and I think the change since is mostly due to China genuinely showing progress and positive change.

Which makes sense: China has been largely passive and non-interventionalist geopolitically, siding with the status quo and mostly just trying to peacefully coexist with everyone. Which, you know, they have good reasons for even if their lack of material support for revolutionaries is obviously a big negative for oppressed people and revolutionary movements that could really use the help; this is where you get tendencies like Hoxhaism splitting from Maoism, Maoism becoming very critical of the CPC, and other “ultraleftist” tendencies developing who have a serious axe to grind with China over its foreign policy. China under the liberal bloc also really didn’t give people any real reason to trust that someday they might come back around and turn the development of industrial capital that opening up as a market to the west enabled back towards benefiting the people and working towards a socialist model again. It’s only comparatively recently that the CPC has gone and shown that they are willing to wield power and use capital to directly address a lot of the long-running problems China has had with rural poverty and to tackle the corruption issues that resulted from their very middle-management-centric organizational structure where the central leadership was overwhelmed and materially had to leave everything to local officials that they’ve struggled to maintain oversight over.