Like the title says, I'm new to Marxism and have only read a couple works relating to socialism. I don't think I know enough about Marxism to firmly define myself into any "type" (although council communism sounds pretty interesting.) Second Thought and Yugopnik are what got me into Marxism, but more recently I've been listening to Socialism For All's audiobooks and reaction videos while driving. In his reaction video to The Deprogram's China Episode, he makes some interesting points about how China could become "social imperialist" and succeed the US/NATO as the new imperialist global hegemon, among some other things. From an outsider's perspective, I don't consider the current China socialist because of the fact that private property and many other capitalist elements still exist within it, but I do appreciate how much it has been able to develop over the past few decades, like poverty reduction and massive infrastructure projects that wouldn't be possible with typical liberal democracies. People excuse the private property and "restricted" capitalism as necessary evils until China has the conditions to create socialism, but I have doubts about whether China's still even working towards socialism or whether the Chinese proletariat actually hold power over the bourgousie. China doesn't support communist movements internationally, and the liberalized economy has gone on far longer than the NEP in the soviet union despite both being created for the same reason, and I can't seem to find a good reason why it's lasted this long. (I also have concerns about privacy and the fact that access to the outside internet is restricted, although that's not really related to this topic.) I'd stumbled across this reddit thread a while ago, and while I know reddit isn't the best place for serious discussion, I think that the person in the video does make good points, as do the people in both the r/TankieTheDeprogram and r/ultraleft threads and I honestly don't know what to think or who to take seriously in that discussion. I would appreciate if anyone could give me a genuine response to these concerns, thanks.
Edit: Thank you all so much for the responses! I've learned quite a bit reading them, although I haven't had a chance to check out the links people have sent yet. I'll try to update this post with any new questions and respond to comments whenever I have time.
I'll try to answer some questions you may have.
You don't reach socialism by pressing a button. I recommend reading Deng Xiaoping's essays on the market reforms in China. You need to create the conditions for socialism to come about. The only way to do that is to improve your population's material conditions. "Better a poor communist than a rich capitalist" is fundamentally wrong, because you can't be a poor communist. There's no such thing. Communism is the stage you reach when society has reached a post-abundance stage.
And very importantly, you can't ignore the conditions that China was and is operating under. China had a fall out with the USSR, was at odds with the West, and had nearly a billion people to care for. If they hadn't industrialized fast enough, they'd be another India today. I'm not saying that industrialization didn't introduce economic exploitation, but the choice was either that, or being a backwater low level factory for Western exploitation.
China has now reached the stage where its population is in a good spot, it has a strong industrial base, and it has the largest economy in the world. Hence, ever since Xi became the general secretary, the focus shifted from rapid expansion of industry to the refining of existing base to clear out capitalist influence and undoing Jintao's mistakes of letting capitalists into the party.
For all its merits, China isn't perfect, but they're building towards Socialism. The best evidence for this to me, is the flight of millionaires and billionaires in China is the highest in the world, both in absolute and relative terms. Conversely, US is still the desired location for global capital and Bourgeoise.
With regards to China's inaction with international movements, China has made it clear that they will never interfere in other countries' affairs. It learned from the USSR's mistakes. When you force socialism on people, all it does is alienate them further. They see it as social imperialism, because a foreign system is being forced on them, even if it's materially better for them. Socialism has to come from the grassroots. It has to come from below, not above.
The USSR used the NEP to industrialize fast, because it had breathing room with most of the capitalist world engaged in an intra capitalist war. Despite that, it still faced a lot of attacks from all sides. Both economic and physical. White army was heavily supported by the West. And the USSR failed in one crucial aspect, its population never had consumer goods. They had great lives and economic development, but not enough consumer goods, since the USSR heavily focused on military to fight the West, neglecting regular people's wants. This helped capitalist propaganda spread faster, creating reactionary elements in society.
I personally wish China was more like the USSR, but the truth is, USSR isn't around anymore, and the way it operated also has a large hand in that. China learned from the USSR's mistakes, and now it's more powerful than the USSR ever was.
Besides, China accepts materialism, not idealism. They're not trying to prove socialism is better than capitalism. They already know it's a fact, and sooner or later, all countries will come to accept it. China is just building towards Socialism, because they know that's what the future is.