I've been listening to "Blackshirts and Reds" on recommendation, but Parenti's view on China seems far more critical than I expected. What is the general opinion on China's post 1978 reforms?

I feel like I don't hear much internal critique about China from the ML side of things - is this more of a 'critical support' posture or are people just generally more optimistic about long-term socialization of their market?

edit: if there are more reading materials that discuss this topic in-depth, I am very interested in recommendations

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There was a real fear at the time that China would follow the the west into neoliberal reform hell. The west thought they would follow along as well and relations improved a lot, and western media portrayals of China started to become less hostile. Under Xi it became clear China wouldn't follow along and sell everything they have to western interests for cheap, official attitudes towards China took a 180 and started becoming hostile again.
- I was trying to find some western coverage of China from the 90s but didn’t have much luck.
  I did find this from 2023 which lays out the current coverage pretty well
  https://thediplomat.com/2023/02/anti-china-rhetoric-is-off-the-charts-in-western-media/
  
  There was a very favorable documentary by Ted Koppel in 2008 called The People’s Republic of Capitalism that basically made the argument that this wasn’t your dad’s China anymore: open economy and society, secret prisons replaced with a couple days in the drunk tank for noisy political dissidents, emergent middle class similar in outlook and interests to middle income Americans. This was about 4-5 years before Xi so it tracks.
  
  I don't know of any analysis about it, maybe fair.org has something, but from what I remember there was a shift towards relentless negative coverage shortly after Xi came to power. Especially when the belt and road initiative started.
  
  Obama's "Pivot to Asia" was around 2012, so this tracks

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