independent foreign policy." Recalling his pre-1956 impressions of China, Hoxha once wrote that, "It was said that Mao was following an 'interesting' line for the construction of socialism in China, collaborating with the local bourgeoisie and other parties, which they described as 'democratic', 'of the industrialists', etc., that joint private-state enterprises were permitted and stimulated by the communist party there, that elements of the wealthy classes were encouraged and rewarded, and even placed in the leadership of enterprises and provinces, etc., etc. All these things were quite incomprehensible to us and however much you racked your brains, you could not find any argument to describe them as in conformity with Marxism-Leninism. Nevertheless, we thought, China was a very big country, with a population of hundreds of millions, it had just emerged from the dark, feudal-bourgeois past, had many problems and difficulties, and in time it would correct those things which were not in order, on the right road of Marxism-Leninism." Likewise in September 1977 Hoxha wrote that, "The question of Chinese communism has been an enigma to me. I am not saying this only now, but have expressed my doubt years ago in my notes. This doubt arose in my mind immediately after the Bucharest Meeting, and it was aroused because of the timorous stand the Chinese adopted there. ... Khrushchev's activity compelled Teng to change [his conciliatory] report and make it somewhat more severe, because Khrushchev issued a document in which China was attacked, and distributed it before the meeting. Teng was also compelled by the resolute stand of our Party, but that is a long story. The later stands of the Chinese, I am speaking about their political and ideological stands, have shown continuous vacillation, and this was precisely the basis of the enigma and my doubt about them ... but now we can say that this policy of China was a great fraud, a major manoeuvre of the Chinese revisionists to disguise themselves." In the view of the Albanians, the shift in China's line between 1956 and 1960 was due to the following: "After the death of Stalin, the Chinese, with Mao Zedong at the head, thought that their time had come ... they wanted to gain as much as they could from Soviet economic aid, in order to become a great power, indeed, an atomic power. But these projects could not be carried out smoothly. If