If the proletariat is the class that benefits from their own work and the government has their popular support, is this really the red fash, authoritarian exploitation that the other comments and western media assume it to be

Yes, because without basic political rights which do not exist in China, Chinese workers have no political agency by which they can express a political preference. It is entirely possible that given such freedoms, the Chinese people would implement the exact same system of government they have now, but there is no way to know that since the functional basis for political self determination does not exist.

China is a brand new type of socialism, one that Marx couldn’t ever hope to write about, as that would have needed him to go through many important moments of world history (great wars, nuclear development, age of information…) that he could never have predicted. China in the 50s was an agrarian/third world nation, after the CCP took over their plan was simple: “Muster the strength of the entire population to push China into a new age through carefully planned country-wise economic strategies”. It’s a different perspective when compared to western capitalist societies that value individual freedom above the well-being of the nation, their idea was to value the nation above everything and everyone. To sacrifice generations in favor of economic development, to turn weakness, a poor country with more people than it could feed, into strength, a country where labor was so cheap it became the perfect trap to steal the advantages the first-world had developed: industries. Now, the western world has lost all of its advantages, they no longer have manufacturing capabilities that are enough even to supply their own demand, and its final advantage, technological supremacy slowly slips away from their hands. All that they have left is a class of uber-billionaires more than willing to sacrifice entire nations just so they can buy another yacht. Meanwhile, western media points their finger and exclaims: “Inhuman! The Chinese are using their own people to steal our western jobs with cheap labor!!!”, and Liberals left and right look down from their “moral superiority” seat of ignorance and agree, calling the chinese the evil masterminds of the century for daring to not (EDIT: word order) have their same views that valuing individual freedom as a divine natural right, as said Locke, is the only correct moral path, and anything else is Evil wrought upon this world. Thus, they fail to see that, although indeed Machiavellian-looking, valuing the community, the society, above the individual is exactly where the true left had always resided. What good is personal freedom when a man can buy another? And do not mistake me, I do not claim their methods to be flawlessly, they are indeed ruthless, but the Chinese Government can most certainly be conferred the title of “efficient”, in a few decades they took a country from the throngs of poverty and the past and pushed it forward, with sacrifices indeed, to the forefront of modern development. Are they truly wrong? Would you prefer they’d stuck to being slaves of first-world countries? As someone who does live in a third world, developing country, as they say, I’d be very very glad to see the same mentality of my own government, I’d sacrifice myself gladly to hope for a better future for the next generations. Instead, all I get is the proverbial choice of working my whole life to not starve to death while making a garbage human billionaire hiding in a mansion somewhere richer and richer at the cost of the people, all while my country not only barely inches forward in quality of life, but is constantly shoved back down the mud by the actions of western interests, that easily stoop to all the tricks of the CIA handbook just to keep us too busy too see that the evil wears not red, but blue and stars.