I think political convictions aren’t normally swayed by debate. You can dispute individual claims all day but beliefs are more than the sum of their parts. I mean, even if you debunk every single justification he has, that doesn’t mean he’ll stop believing that China is capitalist. No, he’ll probably just invent new reasons instead. So rather than asking why he believes it, you should ask why the idea is compelling to him.

Part of the reason is surely because his job depends on it. But besides that, what about China does he take issue with? That they do business with the US? That their capitalist class still exists? That they’re unlike western “socialists”?