Is China communist?

At the end of the cold war, the Chinese government adopted many economic reforms as a way to remain in power. Central planning gave way to a free(r) market. Today, China is more capitalistic than communistic, at least in terms of the economy. It's more a crony capitalism than true capitalism, but it's still far more efficient than what they had under communism. Politically, it's still frozen in the 1950s with a one-party state controlled by the communist party.

China is communist.

The two nations still shared fairly similar values until the 1950s, when a major ideological rift developed. During this time, the Soviet Union advocated coexistence with capitalism. China, meanwhile, remained determined to pursue a policy of aggression, labeling the United States in particular as an imperialist enemy and declaring an intent to assist with revolutionary struggles of people oppressed by imperialism.

One of the largest differences between Soviet and Chinese Communism is that Chinese Communism lasted but Soviet Communism did not. After Mao's death, China restructured its government, providing its citizens with greater freedoms and changing its economic policy to favor a market economy open to foreign trade instead of one that was centrally managed. During the 1980s, the Soviet government remained unwilling to make reforms it viewed as capitalistic, and the resulting economic decline lead to the Soviet downfall. Since then, Russia has attempted to shift to a market-based economy with mixed results. At the same time, China shifted to a system known as market socialism, which differed from the USSR in its reliance on a free market. This system is still in place in China, which now has one of the world's strongest economies.

They call themselves communist. Their name is even the Peoples Republic of China, but it's a very diluted form of communism. The people have many more freedoms then they did a while back, and they're slowly switching over to a more capitalist, market economy.

Totally

China is communist only by name, it is really fascist as it now is driven by private enterprise yet is not a democracy.

Russia is not communist and has not been so for many years now. it is a gangster dictatorship.

China is run by the Communist party politically but they do have private enterprise. When the Soviet Union existed, there was no private enterprise in China. That changed in the 1960s when Richard Nixon decided to have relations with them.

PR China today is definitely not Communist. Small business flourishes, more than in the US, really. The Party invites businessmen and entrepreneurs to join, not something *real* Communist parties do.

The Communist Party runs the country but it no longer has a command economy

How can China be Communist when private ownership of business and property is thriving?

Because neither one was communist. Unless you believe North Korea is actually a Democratic Republic, as they call themselves.