on the socialist character of china
@yogthos @Arindamfeel free to disagree but
in terms of the class composition of Chinese society, it's very difficult to say that a dictatorship of the proletariat exists, i don't think the chinese proletariate controls the state, i don't even think the CPC is run by workers. You could say that it once did, the first 2-3 decades of the PRC had an unmistakable class character, the leaders of the new government almost exclusively came from worker/peasant backgrounds, and there were countless communes and cooperatives many of which still exist. But there was a massive liberalization that happened in the 80's and today they have an incredibly stratified society, with a large bourgeoisie and middle class, lots of local level corruption, real estate bubbles,, regular strikes and labour disputes between (western backed) chinese capitalists and workers unions, all the problems every capitalist economy has, albeit with a nominally communist party in charge, a distinct political and legal system etc.
The CPC is controlled by capitalists, you can't represent the proletariat while being a billionaire stakeholder is a massive corporation, let's all go to duckduckgo and type in "Xi Panama Papers" the CPC has a huge nepotism problem and the children of the first generation of party leaders are all super rich, almost like the used their positions as state bureaucrats to enter the bourgeoisie, the same thing basically happened in USSR only china never had a radical break but instead were able to more smoothly transition into capitalist development while preserve the old Stalinist state apparatus.
China's economy is also "coupled" with the US economy, the US outsource basically all of it's manufacturing and China has taken up most of it. There's a very large and vocal pro china wing Wall Street gossip
I don't think speed of development has anything to do with whether a state has "socialist character" David Harvey clearly knows nothing about china, because china does have private property enshrined in it's legal system, Western legal systems also have eminent domain or similar terms for "the government can jack your shit", a generous reading here is that in China private property is not seen as some sacred right the way the English do(fair). A Bourgeois state could nationalize large sections of it's economy or put it under direct state control, as happened in US during WWII, the Marshal Plan and US Occupation/Reconstruction of Japan and Korea. i guess that's "socialist" in the way that Norway or Sweden are.
One could say the different between a "dictatorship fo the proletariate" and bourgeois Keynesianism or Social Democracy is the ideological content, the chinese call what they do Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, i it's just deeply opportunistic in a class collaborationist sense. But socialist thinking has influenced chinese state policy in a way that's benefited poor and working people.