I wouldn’t say we viciously defend it, after all even if China wasn’t socialist it’d be worth defending from an anti-imperialist perspective. China emerged from years of colonial subjugation (the century of humiliation) after the Chinese revolution, and built what is today the only country capable of challenging US world domination.

Really though, China’s massive improvements in life expectancy, real wages, and living standards show that its socialist, planned system is working.

No system is perfect, especially in a transition away from world capitalism, and subordinating the market economy to the will of the CPC, to provide for the needs of the people, and protecting China from western interventionism, remain the most important tasks for the CPC.

As far as “China not being communist”:

• The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2
• Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
• Is the CPC committed to communism?
• The Long Game and Its Contradictions.