I was teaching one of my highschool students and one of the questions was what is the main difference between america and china? -The answer he came up with is that america is a capitalist country but china is socialist. On what basis can this belief be maintained? I thought china was now totally capitalist.

I believe one of the definitions of socialism is being able to rely on your government to live, which would make western countries with their benefits culture far more socialist than china - where you basically must rely on yourself or your close family.

If you accept the classic definition of socialism as a system in which the means of production / major industries are owned and controlled by the State, then maybe China still is very much a socialist country?

I have said to students that China is a Communist country. This is a matter of defacto labelling.
You can turn the question around and ask the students (class exercise) to describe what they think other capitalist and socialist countries (not China) do, what would a socialist society do.
Remain neutral, elicit information from all students. Don't make any judgements, don't give your views, encourage them to think and let them decide.
In a high school you will sometimes meet very dogmatic teenagers, and it is pointless trying to meet them head on. You won't change the mind of a bigot. I have had one student basically say that certain historical evidence is just western propaganda. You cannot beat blind dogma with a rational argument.

Anecdote. I once had a Chinese college prof. ask me if I see communism in China. My answer was, "I see Communism but I don't see much evidence of socialism". She laughed and said, "I know what you mean".

capitalism is an economic system while socialism/communism is both a political/economic system. some people confuse the American government as being 'capitalist' (and in a sense the corporatocracy of America is). technically, America is a democratic republic with a capitalist economy (unless bailing out banks and multi-nationals..which would be socialist in a way), while China can be defined as a communist state with a capitalist (street vendors)/socialist (huge multi-nationals) economic system. I'm dreading explaining this to everyone when I head home to 'merica this summer. the '..but aren't they COMMUNISTS??' response will get old...

Forget about mentioning communism or socialism; to put it simply:
You could tell your student that while americans can participate in the government by electing their representatives, such as mayors, governors, presidents and etc; China is a TOTALITARIAN country, people have no choice about who or how they are ruled (no free elections) and there is only a single party in power, there are no REAL opposition parties with different proposals.

Furthermore, chinese people have no free press and abuses by the government cannot be broadcasted to the population. THIS is the main difference between China and the USA now.

Forget means of production and other outdated marxist concepts, if your student is gonna like to hear this, or even comprehend it, that would be a different problem.

You can also ask your students if they have any voted for their Peoples Representatives.

Also i was talking to my girlfriend about a certain incident that happened at the end of the 80s in Tiananmen square Beijing. She had never even heard about it. I expected her, a university grad, to at least know the official version; but to not have even heard about one of the biggest events in her country's recent history - tanks rolling into the capital - is quite unbelievable.

My answer to the question would be "No, China is a communist country, but not classic communist country. It is communism with Chinese characteristics. It is a special case, forging its own type of communism which the world has never seen before. If anything, it is a communist style of government which has instituted a capitalist economy, with a few socialist aspects coloured through with traditional Chinese values."

Really you can point to lots of ways that China is part of all of these. The market economy shows it is highly capitalist, the government style shows it is communist (as well as land ownership and other traits like independence of courts, control of media, centrally planned economy etc), the partial or total government ownership of many large corporations who provide essential services and/or grow the countries infrastructure shows it is socialist.

China is a mixed economy with a leninist form of government, run by people who claim to be marxists. It was either state-capitalist or state-socialist, depending on your definition of socialism, which does/must include public ownership/control of the major means of production. State control/ownership of the means of production might be socialist, but that would depend on the nature of the state - the idea of democratic socialism is not a contradiction in terms. Communism is supposed to come at the end of history - there are no communists countries.
I would call the US a late-capitalist country with a bourgeois democracy, in which the political system is largely democratic - one man one vote etc. - but money power, which is real power, is certainly not democratic.
Totalitarian is way too strong a term to define China today.