Why didn't Communism Collapse in China as in other countries?

During the 20th century, communism was undoubtedly on the rise across Eastern Europe, Asia, and other nations. Yet, less than a full century later, only five communist countries remain across the world today. One of those countries is the globally significant nation of China. While the communist ideology lost momentum and prosperity around the world, the People's Republic of China has managed to stay not only a communist country, but also an important nation on a global level. Given the contrasting results of communism across other nations, how is it that the vastly controversial ideology and structure has still not collapsed in China? The role of both Marxism and the Russian Revolution in the introduction of communism to China was beyond notably important. Many Chinese people became attracted to the socialist and communist theories, including Li Dazhao, the head librarian at Peking University in Beijing. Dazhao was a supporter of the Russian Revolution, and in June of 1918, he created a Marxist study group at the university. The following year, a man by the name of Mao Zedong joined the group. Mao would go on to become the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the People's Republic of China, although by this point he was merely a clerk at the university library. During this time, Dazhao came up with a strategy to overcome the obstacle of China's widely peasant-based population. Claiming that the country could not truly be liberated until the peasants were also liberated, Dazhao stated that foreign ill-treatment of the Chinese people made even the non-working members part of an exploited proletariat. One of his Marxist proteges, whom he had sent out to gather support from the peasants, Ku Qibai, made an impressive name for himself as an organizer of newly recruited peasant Marxists. By the end of spring in 1920, a Bolshevik Comintern official, Grigory Voitinsky, arrived in China and began to expand the available and reliable information on communism and the revolution in Russia. It is largely due to his influence that the Chinese Communist Party was later constituted in July of the following year, although he was heavily assisted by the which made an unfulfilled promise to return the Chinese Eastern Railway to China in an attempt to soften relations between the nations. As this new Chinese Communist Party, known as the CCP, began to grow, it faced some trials and tribulations as the Kuomintang, or KMT, movement also expanded and gained power. Despite the fact that the KMT was actually anti-communist, both Lenin and Stalin after him urged the CCP to cooperate with the KMT, as the Soviets viewed the latter nationalist party as a potential utility. Adversely, the unity between the CCP and KMT began to crumble as the KMT found military and political success in the second half of the 1920s. Turning on the CCP and their Soviet support, the KMT declared the new national government in April of 1927 and repudiated the Communist Party. Unwilling to accept this glaring debacle, Stalin insisted that the CCP continue to try and work alongside the KMT, but he was blatantly ignored. The CCP attempted multiple uprisings, and some found small successes, but ultimately failed to seize power. Some members of the Communist Party, however, did manage to rally a staggering amount of peasant support after fleeing to the countrysides, and they formed the Chinese Soviet Republic of Southern China in 1931, numbering around 10 million members in total. The nationalist government quickly quelled this new movement, forcing its remaining supporters, including Mao Zedong, to flee yet again in what is known as the Long March. Ending up in Northern China, Mao Zedong had now become the leader of the CCP, and eventually took the opportunity to again unite with the KMT in 1936 against Japanese invaders. By the time the civil war between the CCP and KMT recommenced in 1946, Zedong's party had gained significant political and military experience and relevance from their last fight against the foreign threat. Meanwhile, the nationalist government began to rapidly lose what little support they had, and were finally overcome by the Communists in 1949, who were then able to officially found the People's Republic of China. After the establishment of the new People's Republic, the CCP attempted to strengthen ties with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or CPSU. This plan only worked momentarily, until China soon recognized that their stances on foreign policy and ideology vastly differed from the Soviets, leading to the Transnational Alliance being terminated before the start of 1960. Afterward, the Chinese government made industrial and economic development a focal point, leading to the failed Great Leap Forward in 1958, and followed by the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Tensions between the more and less radical factions of the CCP dangerously fluctuated over the next decade, leading to the radical side known as the Gang of Four being arrested immediately following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. A fellow party member Deng Xiaoping then became paramount leader of the CCP, and Hua Guofeng took the title of party chairman as the Cultural Revolution officially came to an end. The program of the four modernizations became the next focus of the development, as the new government leadership shifted more in the direction of market socialism. Deng Xiaoping is also responsible for opening China to the outside world, and is often credited as the architect of modern China, due to his contribution to the nation's contemporary economy. This is basically the point where China moved to another kind of regime, accepting a more liberal trading, and also starting to accept foreign investment. Still, Deng made the decision to step down in 1989, after the Chinese government received foreign criticism in response to the Tiananmen Square event. Communism in China has evolved since its introduction to achieve a remarkably successful, but not technically purely communist status today. While the party still remains in a position of power, the economy in China has taken on some capitalist qualities over the years. The focus switched from the state and isolated economy as it was in other cases in the past. Also, today, see the situation in North Korea. As the top export nation on the globe, China has also managed to take an 88.3% extreme poverty rate in 1981, down to a stunning 0.7% in 2015. This success is clearly impressive, but it would be imprudent to credit it to communism. Under basic communism, the basic principles allow for no Still, some experts argue that China is in the process of becoming more capitalist in regards to their economy, which is very possible, considering the fact that many countries actually have a mixture, to varying degrees, of capitalism and socialism. The potential for this combined structure in China has actually been present since the late 20th century, becoming especially significant around 1978, when Chinese delegates began to travel to over 50 foreign nations to gather information about other economic systems and successes. Only four years later, the ban on private farming was removed, and private ownership businesses across China began to grow, although each company was limited to a maximum of seven employees. While the government still insisted that they were not becoming a capitalist country, despite this declaration, it is clearly a step away from strict communism. Even so, the control of the party in the nation is important to note, and plays a direct role in their status as a communist country. So why has communism not fully collapsed in China, and is it going to? Those are good questions, but the answers are not that simple. Communism in China never really collapsed because it technically does not fully exist. Even though the People's Republic of China is considered one of the last remaining communist countries, its looser socialist and capitalist characteristics have allowed for a highly successful economy and a functional political system. Accepting the creation of communist-capitalist symbiosis and being attractive for investments for its high manpower, China saved itself in the 90s while the whole bloc collapsed, mainly due to being unsustainable. Politics are run by the party and central people's government in a structure that cannot easily be described in western terms. What type of government China is run by is often heavily debated due to this unclear format, but there is no doubt about the communist party's role of authority. If the regime is to come to an end or collapse at any point, it would likely stem from a movement back toward a purely communist structure if the nation ever goes in that direction again. But while they maintain an economic mixture of socialism and capitalism, it is more plausible that their single-party kind of capitalist structure will preserve.