Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
Their idea was to use capitalism to get the country out of that crushing poverty and industrialize, then use the skills they developed to move to full socialism. The reason the west is freaking out so much is they thought if they help modernize china’s industry China will realize the genius of capitalism and discard those commie ideals. But what we see now is greater nationalization of industry and a shift towards actual socialist economic structures. Not to mention, China owns it’s bank- that’s a huge threat to World Bank cause they lend without austerity requirements. Anyway yeah they’re not fully communist yet they’re heading that way though