“There is a radical difference between Stalin and Mao… When Communists make mistakes, the Chinese Communist Party attempts to save them, based on the directive that ’95 percent of the cadres are healthy’ This is the exact opposite of the Stalinist work of destruction…Many Chinese cadres whose positions were very different from Mao remained in the party, and even on the Central Committee. Thus after the line they were supporting was rejected, Li Li-san and later Wang Ming remained members of the Central Committee. They were removed at the Ninth Congress, but they are apparently still members of the party…In Peking we were told that Chen Yi, who still held the title of Minister of Foreign Affairs but was no longer exercising the functions of that office, is supposed to have told Mao that he did not have the courage to attend the Ninth Congress because of what he feared was going to happen. ‘No, on the contrary,’ Mao replied, ‘you must go, you’ll represent the opposition’…Liu Shao-chi’s work, How to Be a Good Communist, became, as we have seen, one of the bases of every debate about the party. The basic texts of Khrushchev have been disseminated throughout China. The Chinese even say that Peking is the only city where you can find the complete works of Khrushchev-they are not available in Moscow…”
– Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, “Daily Life in Revolutionary China”
The Espresso Stalinist 