As a westerner who has at least to some degree been influenced by socialism ideologically, but who perhaps isn't a communist (I don't know what my ideology really is-- and who does), I don't necessarily dislike welfare, but I don't want to build society on it. Instead I want some element of an actual 'to each according to his contribution'-type thing with an exception so that we treat disabled people and others who can't work or who for different reasons end up being unproductive in an acceptable way.

So I don't think this is necessarily unusual in the west either, especially not if you look back to 1950s or 1960s Swedish social democrats.

And this is not something he came up with. This is a restatement of Stalin's philosophy, taken directly from the New Testament (remember that Stalin was training to be a priest in his youth): "He who does not work, neither shall he eat".

A bit old, but still relevant (from Dan Wang's book Breakneck which I am very much enjoying):

In China, The Communist Party's Latest, Unlikely Target: Young Marxists https://www.npr.org/2018/11/21/669509554/in-china-the-commun...

It's State Capitalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

The Party is the only Union you need citizen, a Union outside The Party is definitionally a Reactionary, Revisionist, Capitalist, Fascist, Enemy of The State. We outlawed 996, why would you need anyone else?

Of course. They outlawed private schools, get companies to donate multiple % points of their wealth to the state for redistribution, all companies exist purely at the pleasure of the government, nobody's wealth has any effect on their control by the government, etc.

It's a super communist state, it just happens to also embrace many parts of Capitalism.

The PRC asserts that they follow a modified Marxism-Leninism. Though the ideology is full of hypocrisies and plain old nonsense. For instance, they refer to themselves as a "people's democratic dictatorship" that is "led by the working class". This irrationality extends into their stated foreign policy approach of "peaceful rise" & respecting sovereignty, a "socialist market economy" in which independent labor unions are illegal & violently suppressed, and anything else you can think of.

They're basically totalitarian gaslighters. See how hysterical the PRC gets whenever any nation indicates that they will protect Taiwan from violent invasion. You can see an obsession with narrative control that borders on pathological.

You got the order mixed up here btw, socialism is the precursor to communism, not the other way around!