To my knowledge, neither the USSR nor the PRC ever claimed to actually have achieved communism (hence why the USSR has “socialist” in its name, not “communist”), but they were governed by “communist” parties in the sense that they were following in the tradition of Marx and Lenin and at least claimed to want to achieve communism at some point. Of course, the USSR no longer exists, and the PRC has undergone a series of economic reforms since the 1970s, after the death of Mao. They now claim to follow something they call “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, but as far as I can tell it seems very similar to something I would call “capitalism in an authoritarian one-party state and a bunch of blabla about how it technically doesn’t contradict Marx”, but ymmv. So imo the CCP is now only called “communist” for historical reasons, and in that sense I see it as similar to the case of North Korea, but they might still have some theorists who would disagree with that assessment. And in the West in particular many people just mix up terms like “socialist” and “communist” anyway, and also often don’t realize that the economic systems of Russia and China have changed a lot since the end of the cold war (or Mao’s death).
I don’t get how the USSR and CCP are actually “communist.” Are they as “communist” as North Korea is a “Democratic Republic?”
To my knowledge, neither the USSR nor the PRC ever claimed to actually have achieved communism (hence why the USSR has “socialist” in its name, not “communist”), but they were governed by “communist” parties in the sense that they were following in the tradition of Marx and Lenin and at least claimed to want to achieve communism at some point. Of course, the USSR no longer exists, and the PRC has undergone a series of economic reforms since the 1970s, after the death of Mao. They now claim to follow something they call “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, but as far as I can tell it seems very similar to something I would call “capitalism in an authoritarian one-party state and a bunch of blabla about how it technically doesn’t contradict Marx”, but ymmv. So imo the CCP is now only called “communist” for historical reasons, and in that sense I see it as similar to the case of North Korea, but they might still have some theorists who would disagree with that assessment. And in the West in particular many people just mix up terms like “socialist” and “communist” anyway, and also often don’t realize that the economic systems of Russia and China have changed a lot since the end of the cold war (or Mao’s death).