How has China maintained their revolution as opposed to the Soviet Union?

Fact is, taking a poor country and nearly fully centralizing the whole thing in a short period of time is incredibly disconnected from Marxian theory. You could argue it was necessary under Stalin to prepare for the war with Germany, but it inevitably meant that post-Stalin there would need to be a period of de-centralization to bring the country back in line with the amount of centralization its level of productive forces could actually support, and then they could begin to centralize again gradually after the fact as Marxian theory actually predicts.

The problem, though, is that having to undergo a process of de-centralization is easy to be co-opted by corrupt actors who want to go all the way back to capitalism. The Soviet Union struggled with extreme levels of corruption and politicians used the de-centralization trend, which mostly started under Brezhnev although there was a little under Khrushchev, in order to push for full capitalist restoration so that they could suddenly become billionaire oligarchs overnight by privatizing state monopolies and selling them off to their brings for pennies.

One of the reasons this was so successful for the oligarchs is because Gorbachev had started to unravel the Soviet political system by adopting western liberal ideas and implementing them in the Soviet Union through his demokratizatsiya and glasnost, such as introducing competitive elections for president, which effectively separated the powers of the executive branch from the legislative, making the Supreme Soviet no longer a "working body" as described by Marx but a parliamentary body, and then led to the constitutional crisis between Yeltsin and the parliament resulting in the complete collapse of whatever was left of the dying DOTP.

Both the Soviet Union and China had to go through a transition period since both Stalin and Mao centralized the economy far more than what their level of industry could actually support. The difference, though, is that Deng realized this transition period could cause a return to capitalism, so he made an effort to centralize the political system and oppose any attempts to implement liberal ideas into the political superstructure, in order to keep the DOTP strong during this period. For example, Zhao Ziyang was removed from his position and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life because he expressed sympathy with liberal democratic ideas.

Deng introduced the "Four Cardinal Principles" to the country's constitution, requiring that the country always remains on the socialist path, upholds Marxism-Leninism, and upholds the leadership of the Communist Party, making all of these legally not up for debate as they are constitutional law. He also introduced the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to promote the study and education of Marxism (which also played a role in the development of that recent Marx anime). Included in the Four Cardinal Principles was also to uphold Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng also refused to remove Mao's portrait from Tiananmen Gate, because he viewed Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization" as introducing a sort of political nihilism into the country, i.e. making people feel ashamed for the socialist country's past, and thus giving ammunition to capitalist roaders.

Ultimately, the point is, both China and the USSR had to go through a period of transition that could easily lead to capitalist restoration if not done carefully, and doing it carefully required strengthening the DOTP, while the USSR instead weakened it and restored bourgeois elements into the political structure, causing the DOTP to collapse.

Clearly, though, the Soviets did not do this merely due to a bad theoretical understanding of Marxism. Gorbachev is not even a Marxist, he's openly anti-communist saying the only mistake he made was not outlawing the communist party sooner. How the hell does an anti-communist become general secretary of the communist party in the first place? Clearly the Soviet Union had a much bigger problem with corruption and deep problems in its political system.

Because Gorbachev was not a Marxist, not only did he dismantle the DOTP, but his economic reforms made little sense as well. From a Marxian perspective, yes, the Soviets needed to decentralize a bit, but only in underdeveloped sectors of the economy, what Deng Xiaoping called, "grasping the big, letting go of the small". Gorbachev just tried to introduce markets for markets' sake, a bit like how Sears when bankrupt after trying to introduce internal competition for no reason, leading to increased inefficiency and, well, under Gorbachev, a recession.

Ultimately, the difference between Deng and Gorbachev is that Deng was actually a Marxist who wanted to preserve socialism and the DOTP and made efforts to do so, as well as implemented his economic reforms based in Marxian political economy, while Gorbachev was not a Marxist, but because he was raised in a socialist country, he didn't even understand liberal ideas much at all, either, so he was just a know-nothing buffoon who blindly copied things from the west without any regards for his own country's conditions or how they might play out in practice.

from https://np.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/v4ey28/how_has_china_maintained_their_revolution_as/ib40vje/