Free trade and reciprocity agreements don't depend on a country's political leanings. You either play ball with the world or you don't. Can't have it both ways.
I think that's a concept that is thorny enough to merit a word on what we mean by that. I personally don't know what it actually points at (is there any "free trade" ever happening in real life ?), or my naive interpretation would be trade with absolutely no rules, but I assume that's not what you're pointing at.
Please don't call me deranged. How much do you know about China?
As vague and imprecise as the term "most capitalist" is, it is a blatant ignorance of the way Chinese people (have to) live, especially in cities, to think that it isn't a consequence of an extreme form of capitalism: enormous gaps between the wealthy and the poor and materialism.
China is as much a communist country as Congo is a republic.
Edit: Reading the other comments, it seems like we might all value different aspects of the country to define whether it is capitalist.
China's national bourgeoisie has a seat at the table, but there are plenty of recent examples of them being brought to heel by the CPC. So, while they definitely have some capitalist productive relations I'd hardly call them capital-C Capitalist in the "ruled by capitalists" sense of the term.
Compare with the US where the capitalist class not only has a seat at the table: they are the table. And the chairs around the table, the room the table is in, the building the room is in, the property the building is on, the people who go in and out of the building, and the bullets that shoot anyone who tries to enter the building who isn't supposed to. The US is "more capitalist" in all the ways that count - what might be confusing you is that China has more sustainable and powerful relations of production which is why they're overtaking the US. But that doesn't make them capitalist.
IDK about that but you are correct that it is explicitly not communist. It's ruled by the "communist" party that wants to "establish communism" but it is very explicitly only on the path to communism even according to its own propaganda.
It's a "communist country" in an aspirational sense, not in a descriptive sense. When we call countries "capitalist" by contrast, we usually mean that in a descriptive sense. This tends to lead to a lot of confusion: nothing that China does is "communism", it's at best something that is done with the justification of being part of the pursuit of communism. Whether or not the CCP is truthful or honest in its claims about its aspirations is a different question.
All other countries have heavily state sponsored economies. We just call them "subsidies", "research grants", "tax rebates" etc.
Many industries wouldn't be where they are without decades long government intervention, and govs will also apply extra scrutiny on who owns which company, and pick up the winners as needed for national interests.
China is the most transparent about it, but being transparent and being the most engaged in it are two different things.
To be clear, I think that's just the natural state of things. Real free markets are chaos and we want countries to actually think about where they're going.
