I'm aware we disagree here, and I'm not trying to derail. I'm okay with disagreeing.

For the PRC, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and governs the large firms and key industries. The working class is steadily advancing in material conditions, and as production develops it is increasingly planned. A bourgeois state would not allow capital to be so constrained and boxed in, and at the same time a state cannot be anything other than an extension of the ruling class. In China, this class has been the working class since the revolution, and it is backed up by the fact that the CPC is supported by over 90% of the population.

The PRC certainly isn't much farther than the primary stage of socialism, as they call it, but already aspects of the intermediate stage are appearing. Reality more closely aligns with the CPC's stated goals and strategies than it does their critics, which is why most ML orgs back China and consider it socialist right now.

As for Maoists, I don't mean Mao specifically. Mao was a Marxist-Leninist, and his contributions to China and its developments in socialism have been critical. Mao is one of history's most important Marxist-Leninists. However, I disagree with the univeralsality of strategies like the cultural revolution, protracted people's war, and so forth, while Maoists see them as universal to every revolution. Maoists tend to come to the conclusion that revolution is impossible in the global north, which just ends up pushing responsibility onto the global south. That's why I consider Maoists to be ultraleftists, not just anyone that supports Mao and upholds Mao's contributions to Chinese socialism (also called Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought), which I am fully in support of.

Just figured I'd elaborate a bit, you don't have to respond.