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Words have meanings, and the word you're looking for is authoritarian, but that doesn't mean it was a dictatorship.
They were a one party system, that had regularly transitioned power at scheduled intervals for decades. Which means they were not a dictatorship, until Xi stopped those transitions of power.
You're right, words do have meaning. Just because there is a transition from one dictator to another without bloodshed or death doesn't mean it isn't a dictatorship. Just because the dictator of the week is chosen by a committee doesn't mean it isn't a dictatorship. One-party systems are commonly accepted to be dictatorships because of the lack of ability by the people to choose their leader, rather it is chosen by the party (usually the party elites).
I know it's cliche, but I really think you need to go look up the the definition of dictator.
Or, crack a political science 101 book and skip right to the section on political systems.
Or maybe your misunderstanding is just a lack of knowledge of how China's government structure functioned post-Mao, pre-Xi.
Whatever the reason, I think you need to do a little bit of reading, but it's not like you're alone in this misconception so I don't mean this as an insult.
Do you mean like the summary in Wikipedia? Or how about the Democracy-Dictatorship Index? It seems a lot of people in political circles have been calling China a civilian dictatorship for at least 36 years, just based on the cute little pictures.
Feel free to read a definition that's more than one sentence long if you want an explanation for something as nuanced as political systems.
Your first link shows exactly why the CCP wasn't a dictatorship in the era the preceded Xi, and your second link has nothing to do with that era at all.
I have an academic background in this field, so the idea that my understanding is based on reading a single sentence, or a few Wikipedia entries, is amusing.
Here's a nice simple infographic article that would be a good starting point before jumping into any dry academic readings.
My first link has the following quote:
China has been a one-party state for the last 75 years, so the only question is whether or not it was also a dictatorship.
My second link has an infographic labeling China as a civilian dictatorship in 1988, which is prior to Xi putting himself in absolute authority, so how does it have nothing to do with the era prior to Xi taking absolute authority?
As for the handy little link you provided, that only talks about Xi, and we're agreed that he is a dictator running a dictatorship, so, while it's interesting, I'm not sure of the relevance unless your proposal is the the only thing that qualifies as a dictatorship is if it's run by a single individual. In which case, it seems there are a number of people in your purported field who disagree with that stance.
So....you couldn't even be bothered to read more than a few paragraphs?
Dictatorships don't have legal and systemic checks against the autocratic rule, which is why Xi removed them.
You're using a lot of words, but they're based on your lack of understanding post-Mao CCP goverence that Xi upended when he seized power.
But I'm done going back and forth on this. You should feel free to go on believing that I am wrong, and that you are right, because I have no confidence that you would read any dry academic writings on the topic that I respond with, as you couldn't even make it through a few hundred words of a NYT article.
Meanwhile, any question I ask that has a simple answer is ignored. Why was it commonly believed that China was a civilian dictatorship in 1988, more than a few years after Mao and Dengs time? Why is the one-party state of China not considered a dictatorship when one-party states are?
This entire conversation has been moving goalposts, and every time I defined the goalposts clearly enough to not be moved, you simply ran in another direction. I may not have gotten a university degree, but you've still done an amazingly poor job of defending your thesis.
I will give you points on the checks and balances applied after Mao reducing the risks of harm from the dictatorship of China, but the definition of a dictatorship doesn't rely on the benevolence of the leadership, merely the lack of power of the people to change it, which was not negated by dividing the powers of government between different levels.
I imagine that doing research on the fly for a back and forth on CCP governance, forced you to rapidly consume a bunch of half-assed Wikipedia articles, and that flood of new information felt similar to a moving goal post of sorts, but that's in your head.
Regardless, I started, and ended, at the same position... It's the same one that I will lay out one final time: post-Mao, pre-Xi China was not a dictatorship.
From your source:
Now, you saw the word uniparty on the Wikipedia entry for dictatorships, and assumed that applied to all uniparty government's, but it does not.
Other metrics have to be met before it can be considered a dictatorship, for example the USSR under Stalin was a dictatorship, but not under Gorbachev. The USSR was still a repressive authoritarian one-party state, but Gorbachev was not an unaccountable autocrat without systemic checks or limits on his power.
So, back to China:
Here's a list of Chinese presidents, but you can probably skip down to the 4th Constitution, which is the start of the era you keep bringing up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_China
Notice that these leaders come from competing factions and groups within the CCP, some more conservative, some more liberal, but more importantly, they transition power at regular intervals, well, until Xi.
So you can call them totalitarian technocrats, or authoritarian capitalists, but you can't call them communists, and you definitely cannot call them dictators.
All that aside, I don't know why some factual inaccuracies become commonly believed, but I guess the simple answer would be a lack of education, or interest.
Maybe a better question would be why it is you put so much faith in the average layperson's understanding of subjects such as the history of CCP governance, or the political economies of post-Mao China...?
Edit: this isn't a thesis I'm defending, it's a non-controversial fact, that I resent spending so much effort to reiterate, but that's my fault for engaging.
Imagine that your position is that the Earth is flat, and no matter what I say, you respond by telling me that my thesis regarding a theory of a round earth hasn't been sufficiently argued.
Because that's what's been going on here, you're a flat earther of post-Mao Chinese political theory.