Asklemmy

Try reading anything but Western propaganda for like five minutes. Blackshirts and Reds isn't even about China, but if you read it and actually understood it, I think you'd see your takes on China are as ill informed as the uniformly negative takes of the USSR addressed by Michael Parenti in that book.

It's not that there's nothing bad ever happening in China, but you're 100% just regurgitating propaganda which was spoon-fed to you in grade school and by the mainstream media.

Like, take this for example:

If you think they just want to control China (which includes Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. in their eyes), you’re deluding yourself.

Firstly, Hong Kong and Taiwan are China, so I don't know what point you're making. China was colonized by Western powers and Japan, which led to the complicated material conditions in those special administrative regions.

Secondly, what proof do you have that China wants to control anyone else? If it's the classic "debt trap diplomacy" claim, I recommend you listen to actual African leaders and intellectuals on the subject. There's a reason that people are adopting Chinese debt in place of IMF and World Bank debt. China isn't mandating domestic policy, while the IMF and World Bank are mandating domestic policy. It's so common as to almost be a guarantee for the IMF and World Bank to force austerity onto borrowing countries.

professed communist societies

No one of consequence has ever professed that any existing or previously existing socialist state had achieved a communist society. I recommend you read about communism if you want to understand it, and if you don't want to understand it, I honestly have no interest in engaging with you further. Anyone who criticizes something without even tacitly understanding it is not worth my time.

You should be asking questions not making assertions.