John M. H. Lindbeck:

...we seem to see in China a fairly constant process of a adjustment taking place between the Party and different sectors of the population.

...After the assumption of power an important change took place in the role of the [Chinese Communist] Party and the activities of its members. Instead of being soldiers and administrator s of rural base areas providing support for the army, Party members became economic planners and faculty managers; they were called upon to run railways, banks, courts, educational systems, scientific institutes, in short, to take on the whole gamut of key jobs which needed to be performed in a large and complex society.

Strains developed between the politically reliable old warriors and the newer, better educated members whose abilities promoted them to administrative jobs both in the Party and outside. Top Party leaders also have shown signs of uneasiness about the lack of revolutionary spirit and commitment of its new professionally and functionally oriented members. Some of them are said to have tried to use the Party to advance the interests of non-Party organizations in which they work. Others have shown signs of "revisionism" and "rightism," that is, they have been accused of seeking the good will and support of the people with whom they work by attempting to moderate the pace and direction of the Party's politics for transforming China....

Undoubtedly, the regime's reactions to domestic pressures and problems will be more immediate and direct than its response to developments outside China's borders. But China also does react to a changing world environment. Once seventy percent of its trade was with the Communist world; in 1965 about seventy percent of China's trade was with industrialized non-Communist countries. Japan has, I believe, replaced Russia as her leading trade partner. Not one of China's leading trade partners can be classed a strong ally, and ten of these are allies or close to the United States. The rigid "lean-to-one-side" posture of 1949 seems to have crumpled.