Just speaking to them. Ask thrm what their concerns are and how they feel they should be addressed. Then try to draw up plans to address them, present these plans, and repeat the process.

That doesn’t really answer my questions. First, Mao definitely didn’t do that by himself, so he must’ve had an array of people to do that. Are these not the cadres I was talking about earlier?

And then, what do you mean “speaking to them”? Did those people go door-to-door and ask for every single citizen’s opinion? Did they have organized meetings? It’s not really clear in anything I’ve read.

Here’s a research paper that explores its evolution from Mao to today:

Patriotism and the Mass Line: CCP Ideology from Mao to Xi >https://research.library.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=international_senior

That doesn’t really paint it in a good light. Just the fact that a party is “authoritarian” means there’s authorities that enforce strict rules from above, that are not to be challenged by the people. It’s after Mao’s death, but it says Deng also employed “mass movements”, and then when talking about Tiananmen Square protests it says “Deng and other party members viewed compromise with protestors as untenable, as it could lead to the weakening of the nation’s foundational principles, and more importantly to the CCP’s loss of complete control over the nation”. That does NOT sound like a government that listens to the will of its people.