How about China is, in fact, a dictatorship for starters

That could be true. But I wonder, in general, what is the process for determining whether a country is a dictatorship or not, from the outside? China claims to be a democracy and holds elections, like just about every other country under the sun. Of course, not every country with elections is actually a democracy, but if we're talking "hard facts" I think we need to be able to point to specific, objective things.

The Communist in “Chinese Communist Party” is just there for show.

Isn't the Chinese Communist Party the single largest self-identifying communist party in the world? Shouldn't that factor in, like, at least a little bit into our standards for what defines a communist party? Regardless, this is kind of just your subjective opinion, isn't it? Again, what specific, objective standards are you looking at to distinguish between "real" communism and "fake" communism?