Reminds me of people who (from outside "the left") criticize it as squashing individual expression and being cult-like. And then one of the first things I see about any "left" space or org is that there's intense disagreement, if not sectarian splits. Not to say "the left" is unusual in this way. Disagreements and sometimes splits can happen anywhere, regardless of ideology. But it's also not unusually agreeable to each other.
The unifying ML-style position around China, as far as I can tell, goes something like: imperialism is the primary contradiction, not a lack of local communes, and China is heading up an alternative anti-imperialist world order, while also doing an overall good job as a socialist transition state that is by its people and looks after its people.
This doesn't mean China can do no wrong. But much of the time, outside criticisms levied at China are poorly constructed and come from a place of alignment with western imperialist interests, rather than alignment with global liberation. Or they come from a place of essentially wishful thinking, wanting China to be the liberation world police that the US never was but pretended to be, without considering the logistics of what that would mean for China's position in the world, what kind of sacrifice it would require from its people, and the risk it would involve in dealing with an increasingly mask off rabid western empire that still has nukes. None of it's remotely fair and hasn't been since before the inception of the Communist Party of China, when it was suffering under feudal conditions. It still has to be worked through logistically, with planning. If people can offer criticisms of China that allege to logistical and planning mistakes that could be course-corrected, that would, I think, be a lot more substantive as criticism than the majority. The problem with ideological criticisms alone is that they have a tendency to assume that a seemingly subpar or undesirable decision is being made due to a lack of ideological interest in something better. Rather than a decision being made due to a belief that the conditions are not yet right for one approach or another, or due to a logistical mistake in analysis. Discerning that difference properly is critical. If we were to judge AES states in the purely ideological way at all times, they would always be failures because they are not instantly going for global communism and sacrificing everything for it. Which leads to ultra left opining about someone else not doing a thing we want, without effecting the desired change.
