If one looks the current Chinese governance/economic system objectively, it has very little to do with traditional socialism or communism (defined by Max, Lennon and Mao). Instead, it is a non-democratic Voting single party state capitalism, with very little social safety net (health care, education, pension) vs. today’s European socialism or traditional communism. In terms of State Owned Enterprise as % of GDP, it’s not that different from countries like France (~50% I believe). So in some way, it’s economic system is not so different from public sector dominated European countries, and governance ideology is Much closer to Singapore and Russia. In my view, its domestic and global political behavior has a lot to do with internal issues that impact the Gov. ruling legitimacy, e.g. corruption level, economic well-being for the mass population, nationalists sentiment of domestic mass population (TW, HK, XJ, Tibet all falls in here), rather than any global ambition.