China doesn't describe itself as a communist country, and it never has, though during the Great Leap Forward they claimed to be a couple of years away from achieving communism.

The current official description is 有中国特色社会主义 ("socialism having Chinese characteristics"). "Chinese characteristics" refers to the economic reforms of 改革开放 ("reform and opening up") instituted by 邓小平 (Deng Xiaoping) several decades ago, after the cultural revolution died down. Basically, Deng Xiaoping opened up limitied areas of private enterprise and trade, that have steadily expanded to the point where China largely has a market economy (though heavily regulated and manipulated).

In actuality this way of doing things was more or less the original plan of the communist party when they took over China (they originally adhered to Marx's idea that capitalism was a needed intermediate stage, and planned to basiclaly let capitalism flourish for a while). This was very important in the early history post revolution, for the first few years after the communists conquored the mainland--they invited back a great many of the wealthy Chinese capitalists that had fled overseas, protected their property, and allowed private industry to flourish in competition with state enterprises.

This lasted a couple lf years as the prevailing philosophy of the communist party (called "new democracy"), then, Mao Zedong decided that if they continued first instituting capitalism they would end up never going to socialism. Most of the other leaders disagreed, but Mao's influence overpowered them (with a lot of people falling from temporary favor, like Bo Yibo, who had written that the tax system must treat private and state owned enterprises equally to allow competition--that earned him some trouble). Soon after the seizures of private property and dissolution of private enterprise kicked in.

So the official stance of the Chinese Communist party is, we are Socialism with Chinese characteristics (meaning capitalist characteristics), as a nessecary intermediate state in the march to eventual communism (supported by Marxist theory). This is consistent with the early post revolution party philosophy that they called new democracy.They don't say they are a communist state, because achieving comminism (as opposed to socialism) requires the government to dissolve, among other things. Which is the reason that the Soviets and Chinese always described communism as something they are working towards but is many years away.