The Communist Party today, as at the end of the Maoist period, faces a crisis of legitimacy.

The parallel with the late Maoist period bolsters the view that change could come from within.

The reform era began with concepts like "truth," "kindness" and "beauty" already devalued; in the Maoist period, people learned to scoff at such notions.

The stratification system of the Maoist period had been based on a hierarchy of functionally unspecialized cadres directing the labors of a fairly uniform mass of peasants.

When the Maoist period ends in the late 1970's, one of the party members who had led past political campaigns loses his mind and begins to rant and rave, shouting: "Campaign!

China has travelled a vast distance from the socialised economy of the Maoist period and has a huge private sector and large-scale foreign investment.

Ganden is one of the most poignant sights in the area: the monastery was devastated in the Maoist period, and most of it today is only rubble.

In the Maoist period, virtually all top leaders lived inside except Lin Biao, the Defense Minister, and Jiang Qing, Mao's estranged wife.

The revival of such concepts now inspires fear that China will somehow slip back toward the terror that marked the last decade of the Maoist period.

Not since the end of the Maoist period more than a dozen years ago has there been such confusion about the situation in the world's most populous nation.