Well and the reforms did in fact lead to a lot of corruption and liberals entering the halls of power. Xi really did a good job keeping the parts that worked, and reversing the parts that didn’t. He’s still struggling with cleaning up liberal corruption to this day. The good thing was maintaining the dominance of the party through the reforms, so that once an ideologically minded administration got in, they could use that dominance to ensure adherence to the principles of the nation.

Can't blame Parenti for that since the CPC was under the leadership of the Shanghai clique.

Well yea, re-istening to Black Shirts and Reds he made some comment about China, but I did remind myself it was 1998 when he wrote that.