atlantis_cn,
Communism was very similar to a religion in China back in Mao's era, not that any of us lived through it but when we watch the documentaries of millions of people holding those little red book written by Mao and memorizing it, that's a blind belief in something or someone without reasoning. (Again, I'd like to apologize to the Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Buddhism followers here, this is not meant to be an offensive parallel).
The difference now is that no-one blindly follow that little red book or those beliefs any more, in China in the day to day conversations and internet forums etc people constantly reason with each other's political beliefs just like what we are doing now. The CCP does not use the promise of this distant dream to rule its people if you think about it, itself has already made it clear that it's going down a different route.
The distant promise of achieving communism one day is a face saving measure such that it is not seen as an out-right denial of the original intention of its founders, whose picture is still hanging on the square, but it's nothing more than that. Just to be clear, communism is essentially an ideology that a society is so perfect, self-sufficient and its people are so selfless that they opt to do things in their lives that are not for monetary rewards but for their self-satisfaction and the greater good of their communities, it is not a synonym to dictatorship -- far from it! Karl Marx himself was a great philosopher and political economist, he wanted to theorize a perfect society not a backward dictatorial society.
As I said before, many chinese people's struggle today is with the lack of political choice not communism -- we only have one party that on the surface appears to be monolithic and make decisions that affects us all, you cannot officially voice your opinions about which direction our country is going, but we should be clear of two things:
1. The CCP is not as monolithic as it appears, there are many different views inside the CCP and they constantly have their debates just like what you would have for multiple political parties, and "outsiders" of the party such as prominent academics and think tanks frequently feed them ideas and participate in those debates, for example many of the national strategies in the CCP's 5 year development plans are proposed by or consulted with those academics or think tanks; another example is the Taiwan anti-secession law which has profound impact on China's future was not proposed by CCP but by a professor from Jianghan University (余元洲
. This is not a simple dictatorship, this is a rule of the political/academic elites in China, the struggles between different ideologies and political opinions inside the party is very alive. This is different from North Korea.
2. The CCP is reforming itself over time albeit slowly, for example what we can say in China now is very different from what our parents could say when they were our age, you may not think it is enough but you do have more political freedom than before and this trend will continue in part helped by the collective Chinese people's voice such as yours demanding for more. Right now the CCP's core aim is to strengthen China and enrich its people for various geo and international political reasons, and to do this sometimes it needs the political power to make tough and long term decisions, if it had to compete for elections by 1.3b people every 4-5 years then it cannot afford those long term strategies.
I am not a CCP apologist, I'm just an observer of the chinese political system as someone who has lived in both "democratic" and "dictatorial" societies. By watching the actions of the CCP over the recent years I can't help by getting a feeling that because of the unique position that CCP is in (a single-party with strategic decisions not necessarily made by one man but a collective of intellectuals who don't have to worry about periodic public elections), it allowed China to play a very ambitious chess game domestically and more importantly internationally, and because of this it has managed to achieve what China is achieving now -- cheap labor is not the only reason, Africa has plenty of cheap labors, rest of Asia has plenty of cheap labors, why is China the most successful one?