Jung Chang on Maoism

I've just finished reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Fascinating book, although I thought it was not particularly well-written, the content is engrossing. Some quotes (I might do a review later).

To me, the ultimate proof of freedom in the West was that there seemed to be so many people attacking the West and praising China...I realized that this was the kind of society I wanted to live in: where people were allowed to hold different, even outrageous views. I began to see that it was the very tolerance of oppositions, of protestors, that kept the West progressing. (pp 629)

He [Mao] ruled by getting people to hate each other. In doing so, he got ordinary Chinese to carry out many tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by professional elites. Mao had managed to turn the people into the ultimate weapons of dictatorship. That was why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB in China. There was no need. (pp 659, emphasis mine)

(HT to JH for recommending the book).