I don't idealize China. I do "defend" it, in the same way I do with every country. If someone makes a false or unfair criticism of any given country, then I'll push back against that on the basis of it being untrue. This is controversial because it means failing anti-communist purity tests.

For decades, it has been the norm that if someone talks shit about a socialist country, nobody challenges it, for fear of being labelled a Red, a Pinko, more recently a "Tankie." Everyone remotely on the left in the West felt the need to constantly prove that they were "one of the good ones." After actual communists were sidelined, blacklisted, kicked out of organizations like the AFL-CIO, then the tests only got more stringent, until even supporting or being involved with unions at all became suspect. Finally, we reached a point where people are out there labeling people like Obama and Biden as communists.

This state of affairs has resulted in the anticommunist myths and stereotypes to spiral out of control, and it has allowed the standards of what defines someone as a communist to shift to a ridiculous degree. This strategy of caving to anticommunist purity tests has been proven by history to be an abject failure, and is a major part of how we got to the place we're in today.

In this context, there are a handful of people like myself willing to try a different strategy, of refuting falsehoods and trying to ground the discourse in reality, unconcerned about what labels may be assigned to us as a result. Because only a handful of people are willing to do this, in anglosphere discourse that is generally heavily anticommunist, it is only natural that someone such as myself will spend a lot more time refuting misinformation about socialist states than criticizing them on the points that are valid concerns.

This does not mean that I consider China some kind of utopia or that I idolize it, or think it should be a model of emulation (although there are aspects that we could do well to borrow and learn from, like their trains). China has had a unique timeline of development and has it's own unique conditions to deal with. As I said previously, I don't believe there's anything I could do to affect Chinese policy regardless of what I think of it, other than through my own government, and that is not an option I'm willing to support.