There are 5 communist countries in the world today: China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea. These are the only remaining states governed by communist or Marxist-Leninist parties, though their economic systems vary widely from strict central planning to market-oriented reforms.
What Defines a Communist Country?
A communist country is typically defined as a state governed by a single party that officially adheres to Marxism-Leninism or a related communist ideology. In practice, this means a one-party political system where the communist party controls the government, military, and often the economy. However, the term can be misleading — no country has ever achieved the theoretical end-state of communism (a classless, stateless society). What we call "communist countries" are more accurately described as states ruled by communist parties.
Several of these states have introduced far-reaching market reforms while keeping one-party rule intact. China and Vietnam both have large private sectors, foreign-owned factories and functioning stock exchanges, yet their communist parties retain absolute political control. The label describes who holds power, not how the economy is organised — which is why the five countries on this list have almost nothing economically in common.
The 5 Current Communist Countries
1. China (People's Republic of China)
- Capital: Beijing
- Population: ~1.41 billion
- Ruling Party: Chinese Communist Party (CCP), since 1949
- Economic System: "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (state-directed market economy)
China is by far the largest and most economically powerful communist country. Since Deng Xiaoping's market reforms beginning in 1978, China has become the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP. The CCP maintains strict political control, censorship, and a one-party system, but the economy features extensive private enterprise, stock markets, and foreign investment. China's model has been described as state capitalism or authoritarian capitalism. The constitutional position is explicit: the 1982 constitution names the Communist Party's leadership as the defining feature of the system, and a 2018 amendment removed the two-term limit on the presidency. How that structure is arranged in practice is set out in the guide to the government of China.
2. Cuba
- Capital: Havana
- Population: ~11 million
- Ruling Party: Communist Party of Cuba, since 1965
- Economic System: Centrally planned with limited private enterprise
Cuba has been communist since Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959 and is the only communist country in the Western Hemisphere. The US trade embargo (in place since 1962) has significantly impacted Cuba's economy. Recent reforms have allowed limited private businesses and foreign investment, but the state still controls most of the economy. Cuba is known for its free healthcare and education systems, and for a medical internationalism programme that has sent tens of thousands of doctors abroad. The 2019 constitution kept the Communist Party as the sole legal party while dropping the stated goal of building communism in favour of socialism, and legalised private property and foreign investment in terms the 1976 document had not allowed.
3. Vietnam
- Capital: Hanoi
- Population: ~100 million
- Ruling Party: Communist Party of Vietnam, since 1976 (north since 1945)
- Economic System: "Socialist-oriented market economy" (Đổi Mới reforms)
Vietnam has followed a trajectory similar to China. Its Đổi Mới (Renovation) economic reforms, launched in 1986, transformed the country from one of the world's poorest to a fast-growing middle-income economy. Vietnam is now a major manufacturing hub and exports electronics, textiles, and agricultural products globally. The Communist Party maintains strict political control while encouraging economic liberalization.
4. Laos
- Capital: Vientiane
- Population: ~7.5 million
- Ruling Party: Lao People's Revolutionary Party, since 1975
- Economic System: Mixed economy with significant state role
Laos is a landlocked Southeast Asian country that has been governed by its communist party since 1975. Like Vietnam, it has introduced market-oriented reforms while maintaining one-party rule. Laos remains one of the least developed countries in the region, though hydroelectric power exports and Chinese-funded infrastructure projects are driving growth.
5. North Korea (DPRK)
- Capital: Pyongyang
- Population: ~26 million
- Ruling Party: Workers' Party of Korea, since 1948
- Economic System: Centrally planned command economy
North Korea is the most isolated and restrictive of the communist countries. It officially follows "Juche" (self-reliance) ideology rather than Marxism-Leninism, combined with a hereditary leadership system under the Kim dynasty. North Korea has not implemented market reforms like China or Vietnam, and its economy is heavily sanctioned due to its nuclear weapons program. It is widely considered the most authoritarian state in the world.
Former Communist Countries
At its peak during the Cold War, communism governed about one-third of the world's population. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the fall of communist regimes across Eastern Europe in 1989-1991 dramatically reduced the number of communist states.
Former Soviet Union (15 Countries)
- Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan (European/Caucasus)
- Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan (Central Asia)
- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Baltic states, now EU/NATO members)
Eastern European Communist States
- Poland — Communist 1947-1989
- East Germany (GDR) — Communist 1949-1990 (reunified with West Germany)
- Czechoslovakia — Communist 1948-1989 (split into Czech Republic and Slovakia, 1993)
- Hungary — Communist 1949-1989
- Romania — Communist 1947-1989
- Bulgaria — Communist 1946-1990
- Yugoslavia — Communist 1945-1992 (split into 7 countries)
- Albania — Communist 1944-1992
Former Communist States in Africa and Asia
- Mongolia — Communist 1924-1992
- Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) — Communist 1975-1979
- South Yemen — Communist 1967-1990 (merged with North Yemen)
- Afghanistan — Communist 1978-1992
- Ethiopia — Communist (Derg) 1974-1991
- Mozambique, Angola, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Somalia — Various periods of Marxist-Leninist governance
How the Bloc Came Apart Between 1989 and 1991
The collapse took about thirty months and moved faster than almost anyone predicted.
Poland went first: round-table talks with the Solidarity trade union produced a partly free election in June 1989, which the communists lost so comprehensively that a non-communist prime minister took office in August. That same month Hungary began dismantling its fortifications on the Austrian frontier, opening a hole in the Iron Curtain that thousands of East Germans walked through. The pressure that built behind it brought down the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.
Czechoslovakia followed within weeks in the Velvet Revolution, ending with the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel as president by the end of December. Romania was the violent exception: Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were tried by a hastily assembled tribunal and shot on Christmas Day 1989. Bulgaria and Albania unwound over the following months.
The Soviet Union itself held on two more years. The failed hardline coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991 destroyed what authority the central government had left, the republics declared independence through the autumn, and on 26 December 1991 the Supreme Soviet formally dissolved the union into 15 successor states. One event removed more communist governments than every other cause combined.
Whether North Korea Still Belongs on the List
North Korea is on almost every list of communist countries, and its own government has spent decades quietly removing the word.
References to Marxism-Leninism were dropped from the constitution in 1992 in favour of Juche, the doctrine of national self-reliance formulated under Kim Il-sung. The 2009 constitutional revision went further and removed the remaining references to communism altogether, and the guiding ideology is now officially Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism, paired with the Songun or military-first policy. Power has passed from father to son to grandson, which is a dynastic arrangement no communist theorist ever proposed.
What keeps it on the list is structural rather than doctrinal: a single ruling party descended from a Marxist-Leninist original, a command economy, state ownership of the means of production, and no legal opposition. Strict adherence to the ideology would produce a list of four.
Socialist, Communist, and Countries That Are Neither
Most of the confusion around this question comes from three different things sharing overlapping vocabulary.
Communist states in the sense used here are one-party states ruled by a Marxist-Leninist party. That is the five above.
Countries whose constitutions invoke socialism are a much longer and far more varied list. India's preamble describes it as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tanzania, Guyana and Portugal all carry socialist language in their founding documents while holding multiparty elections. Constitutional wording is not a form of government.
Social democracies — Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland — are frequently called socialist in political argument and are neither socialist nor communist by any structural test. They are market economies with private ownership, competitive elections and high taxation funding broad public services. Their prime ministers have said so publicly when American politicians have claimed otherwise.
Two further cases sit awkwardly between the categories. Nepal has repeatedly been governed by communist parties since 2008, sometimes in coalition, but through free multiparty elections with peaceful transfers of power — so it is a democracy that elects communists rather than a communist state. In India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has governed Kerala for much of the past seventy years and held West Bengal continuously from 1977 to 2011, the longest democratically elected communist government anywhere.
The Five Compared
| Country | In power since | Economic model | Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 1949 | State-directed market economy | 1.41 billion |
| Vietnam | 1945 north / 1976 unified | Socialist-oriented market economy | 100 million |
| North Korea | 1948 | Command economy | 26 million |
| Cuba | 1959 (party 1965) | Central planning, limited private sector | 11 million |
| Laos | 1975 | Mixed, large state role | 7.5 million |
China holds more than 95 per cent of the combined population of all five, so any statement about what life is like in a communist country is, statistically, a statement about China. At the Cold War peak the same label covered roughly a third of humanity across more than twenty states; today it covers one large country and four small ones, with economies ranging from the world's second-largest to one of its most isolated. Whether the largest successor state has left that world behind is taken up separately in is Russia communist today.