China wouldn’t have made it this far without “opening up,” the purpose of which was to accelerate the development of the productive forces by importing capital, technology, and knowledge from advanced capitalist states.

The capitalist states didn’t realize this at the time, though. They thought China’s “opening up” was the “liberalization” of China, as happened to the USSR. China punked them. The West de-industrialized itself for “cheap” labor, and now China holds the cards.

What’s different about China is that, unlike in capitalist states, the capitalists don’t run the state.