I ideologically align pretty closely with the average Maoist (I’m still a juvenile punk, what can I say?) but is supporting AES not a useful rhetorical strategy if nothing else? Many folks in the west see socialism as equivalent to propagating poverty for the sake of equality. So even if it’s ultimately BS to call the ML states socialist (as the Maoists hold), some pre-ideological thinking individual we’re trying to propagandize cannot make that determination. Seeing China succeed while claiming to support ML seems like something we can take advantage of. Clearly the US cannot go the route of contemporary Chinese development so I don’t even see how this even causes ideological confusion down the line—a point I don’t see as especially convincing as an individual organizing in the US anyway. Unless China later states that it was pretending to be socialist the whole time just to get American leftists to support capitalism without knowing it, what could go wrong?

Edit: admittedly I finished up my business before finishing the reading so someone please inform me if I missed something that already addresses my point in the original article and I’ll go look for it.