There were classes under Mao, and later the Gang of Four. Class cannot be eradicated without building up the productive forces to a level where public ownership and planning works most effectively, you cannot simply decree rural cooperative farming into full-scale industrialized and collectivized production and distribution. The same applies across the entire economy.

If the Gang of Four and those who uphold them were still in power, China would still have classes, and would not have had nearly the same development. Abolition of class happens by abolishing the material basis of class, not simply by legalistic decree. Even the Soviet Union had black markets with private property, and they existed because there was an economic, material basis for them, not just because the soviets didn’t root them out well enough.

Both Mao and Deng played invaluable roles in China’s history. We must uphold both of them, because they both generally applied Marxism-Leninism correctly for the conditions of China at the time of their administration. The PRC is not “half-socialism,” it’s a socialist country that is steadily and rapidly developing thanks to the success of Reform and Opening Up, as well as Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign that rooted out opportunism that began to take hold in the late 90s and 2000s.

Cheng Enfu’s model here is a decent way to picture China’s strategy for continuing socialist development.