The CCP would like to disagree.

Per Marxism-Leninism the Dictatorship Of The Proletariat is a necessary step on the way to Communism, not the actual Communism.

So whilst Communism cannot exist in a dictatorship, to get there one must go through a dictatorship and invariably nations that do so get stuck at the dictatorship stage and never reach Communism whilst calling themselves “Communist” as part of the propaganda that tries and maintain public support and misportray criticism of the regime as being “criticism of Communism” and “criticism of the Proletariat” (kinda like the Zionists, an even more evil regime, misportray criticism of their regime as criticism of those they claim to represent - the Jewish People) to keep the dictatorial structures going supposedly until Communism is reached, but as it’s never reached, in practice for as long as possible.

In all this propaganda swamp around it, most people not knowing about those theories from anywhere but some political propaganda or other, think Communism is what China has or the Soviet Union had even though that very ideology says those countries are not and never were at the Communism stage and at best are on the path to Communism.

~~No. ~~A communist society is stateless and classless. If there is a dictatorship, even a dictatorship of the proletariat, it is by definition not communist, and no educated Marxist would argue otherwise. However, we do have another term for the transition state between capitalism and communism where it is possible to have dictatorships - Socialism. (And Leninists would argue that a dictatorship of the proletariat is indeed the preferable state of affairs for any socialist state trying to survive in a global capitalist hegemony).

Edit: I initially misread the comment I was replying to.