"The speeches you cite from Deng are mostly from 40 years ago. Deng is trying to reconcile a contradiction in China's political economy, which seeks to introduce market capitalism and maintain Mao's socialist thought. Such a feat is impossible. China is not a socialist economy anymore. Mao's thinking about economics has been tossed into the waste bin by Deng and his successors. China's political economy is based on the model of state capitalism, which is inherently at odds with Maoism. Gorbachev did something similar in the USSR in the 1980s, saying that perestroika was consistent with Leninism. Nonsense. Politically, however, Xi is a Maoist in so far as the Communist party is the only legitimate political force in the country."
oh COME ON
Ope. Looks like this academic needs to be a little more aware of anthropology being a thing that exists. This is a go read Debt post. Markets can exist under all sorts of structures. Dengist political control over capitalist development is a classic move for China. Chinese economic history has a lot of this sort of thing apparently. What's new is the idea of building socialism rather than maintaining stability, the typical reason a government would keep a tight and somewhat violent control on markets. Your professor is trying to argue something that isn't true.