There was general infighting over leadership (there still is) and while some may argue that Deng Xiaoping was never trusted by Mao, I would argue that they were very much bonded by the fucking wars they fought together. The actual dispute was with the Gang of Four and the loyalists that followed Mao’s wife and imo that it was a Marxist dispute over how the country would move forward. There is speculation that it was between the mistress and the wife and while interesting, holds less weight without hard evidence.
There are bourgeois elements and there always were. The class cannot disappear simply because a Marxist party is formed.
More so, Sun Yat-sen’s dream for China is closer to what it is now as a cumulative result of everything that has transpired since the revolution - not just the single step forward of the revolution itself. In his recorded lectures (in regards to the path of China), two points of note: 1. never trust the U.S and 2. The USSR are strong but (I’m paraphrasing here as I haven’t read the text in a year) don’t follow them blindly.
I think Deng was a pragmatic figure , he understood the theory of socialism more than Mao and its leadership in later years. Mao had a hard time relating to the rapid changes in the world. Deng opened up the economy and modernized China in thought and spirit. Although China had a revolution in 1949 but it had a huge gap in technological progress and technically skilled people w.r.t west. China did the right thing and by self correcting the course and again reorienting its policy towards anti west , it brought US to its knees . Marxism is about people’s development not just in paper but in real time world,
