Hello. First of all, I want to congratulate you for putting in the effort of actually coming here to see for yourself instead of taking what you heard at face value, it may not sound like much but it is rare enough to be noteworthy. To be actively challenging your current worldview by looking for alternative ones, especially on political and economical matters, isn't something a lot of peoples ever do, and it is a great sign of open mindedness and intelligence in my opinion.
I will now respond to your questions and affirmation point by point.
I understand how capitalism works, and I have doubts that it is a sustainable system for society long term, but social democracy has been a good way of keeping capitalism in-check in Norway. So even if capitalism is not ideal, it is in theory possible to tax the rich more and keep the whole thing going in the future. I also understand the exploitation and the extraction of surplus value, rent seeking etc.
There are a few things you need to know about social democracy that it's proponents never talk about, more often because they don't know either than to intentionally hide information.
Social democracy in Europe really got going after ww2 as a concession to the working class. The reason the European capitalists allowed this concession is because, on one hand, after ww2 communism was wildly popular in Europe, the French communist party for example was the most popular political party at the time, which meant that there was a great risk of revolutions happening all across the continent, but on the other hand, the fascists had just been beaten to the curb, they were grazing walls and not ready to come out in public again anytime soon, so the capitalists couldn't use the fascists to crush the communists the way they had between the 2 world wars (the Nazis and Italian fascists both took power after successfully crushing ongoing communist revolutions in their respective countries).
Since the capitalists couldn't crush the growing worker movements, yet didn't want to lose everything in a revolution, they decided on a temporary compromise. They would give the working class some social benefits (paid for mainly by neo-colonial exploitation of "former" colonies via import taxes and various means of resources theft) in order to calm the growing revolutionary sentiment.
This is a first thing that is very important to understand because the implied narrative of social democrats is that Europe got all these nice social benefits simply by voting for the right peoples. This is false. The capitalists allowed us social democracy because they were scared shitless that if they didn't, one day we would break down their doors armed with torches and pitchforks and drag them all to the guillotines. In other words, the idea that you can get social democracy by voting for Bernie Sanders (or whoever represent the social democrat faction in your country) is false, just straight up completely false, the capitalists only let social democracy happen when there is a real threat of revolution but the capitalists have been too weakened by whatever factors to fight against one.
The second thing you need to understand about social democracy is that social democracy is, and I cannot stress this enough, always a temporary concession. It never ever stays long term. They let us have it when they are scared and defenseless, but as soon as the threat of revolution is passed, they start slowly but surely taking it all away. You know how there are always massive protests going on in Europe to the point you hear about it all the way in the US? That's why! All over Europe, the capitalists are slowly taking social benefits away, privatizing public enterprises, de-funding schools, hospitals, etc... That's what we have been constantly protesting against for decades.
So no, social democracy isn't keeping capitalism in check, and was never meant to. Social democracy is to keep us in check.
As for taxing the rich and all that. Just the fact the under capitalism, governments are made of billionaires and peoples bribed by billionaires should be enough to dispel any notion that they would ever let such a thing get passed unless under pressure of a potential revolution.
What I am interested in learning is how society would operate and function under socialism / communism. More about the differences. Preferably from less dry sources than The Capital from Marx. Where can I learn more? Preferably a bit entertaining.
I can recommend a few videos:
Socialism is just better, scientifically
"Socialism always fails" is a stupid argument
Why Do Poor Countries Stay Poor? (Unequal Exchange and Imperialism)
DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM - how Socialists make decisions!
How can China be socialist if it has a stock market? Understanding the Chinese economy
People Really Liked Socialism, Actually
Here is a playlist about the history of modes of productions and class struggle based on a textbook:
A series of 3 videos about how capitalists used the Nazis to crush the german revolution:
The Betrayal Of The German Revolution | Part I
The Betrayal Of The German Revolution | Part II
The Betrayal Of The German Revolution | Part III
If you prefer books, you can check out the Library on prolewiki
There are plenty more things you can check out. If you go on Hexbear or Lemmygrad and search for things on there or post to ask for things to read or watch, you'll find plenty. Btw, your account seems to be on the .world instance, this instance defederated both Hexbear and Lemmygrad so you won't be able to use your current account to interact with them, I suggest you make an account on lemmy.ml so that you can.
Your mistake here (apart from taking billionaire owned CIA financed BBC seriously) is assuming that since China is benefiting from this therefore the other countries must be losing to compensate. That's wholly incorrect.
These projects industrialize and develop the partner countries, which help them capture more of the added value of what they sell and improve standards of living for the populations.
You also misunderstand what China want from giving all these loans. China isn't doing that to get land right and ownership, it they wanted that, it would be much simpler and much easier to just buy them. No, what China wants from this is markets. Every time they make it easier to transport goods by helping build railways or roads, every time they help create jobs by building factories, every time they improve standards of living with new hospital and infrastructure, it makes more peoples becoming able to buy what China sells, more businesses that China can invest in, and it makes countries want to continue have good relations with them, which means potential for trade agreement, lesser tariffs, potential alliances, and more. That is what China is doing all of this for, as long as they get it -which they are- they couldn't care less if they don't get the loan money paid back.
The loans China is giving these countries are in Euros or USD, not in Chinese currency. Why? Because it's risk free this way. Compared to what China gets from their gargantuan trade surplus with the west, the loan money they are giving is basically nothing to them. No, really. Take the price of any one thing China has given loan money for, I can guaranty it costed them no more than what they get out of a measly few days of trade with the Eurozone alone, if even that. It's not a big deal to them if they lose that money, they'll have made it back by the week after they lent it, probably sooner. Which is why, contrary to what you may have read, China very often forgive these loans i.e. the countries who got lent the money don't have to pay anything back.