Memes

It's plenty of this, but also plenty of getting sold big changes by liberal politicians and then actually given shit. If that's your experience, then you hear Xi talk about communism while China has low-wage workers and billionaires, it's extremely easy to cynically write off the whole project from the jump (especially given the wall-to-wall anticommunist propaganda in the imperial core).

You really have to dig into the details (and frankly look at AES states in a more generous light than western "leftist" projects, which is to a degree warranted) to have a solid "critical support" position.