Socialist market economy
The socialist market economy is seen by the Communist Party of China as an early stage in the development of socialism (this stage is variously called the "primary" or "preliminary" stage of socialism), where public ownership coexists alongside a diverse range of non-public forms of ownership. The Communist Party of China maintains that despite the co-existence of private capitalists and entrepreneurs with public and collective enterprise, China is not a capitalist country because the party retains control over the direction of the country, maintaining its course of socialist development. Proponents of this economic model distinguish it from market socialism as market socialists believe that economic planning is unattainable, undesirable or ineffective and thus view the market as an integral part of socialism whereas proponents of the socialist market economy view markets as a temporary phase in development of a fully planned economy.
Real socialism
Another aspect of the term real socialism contained elements of the Sino-Soviet split and other "disagreements", which were actually ideological gulfs, between the Soviet Union and its satellite states on one side and the People's Republic of China and the followers of a more Maoist brand of communist ideology on the other. The Soviets wished to enforce the idea that their version of socialism was "real" and the Chinese and their followers were not, precisely because the Maoist-inspired communist movement, which had grown so rapidly worldwide as a "radical left" alternative to Soviet ideas, had consistently claimed that the Soviet Union was no longer socialist and had betrayed the revolution. To counter this claim of Marxist revisionism, the Soviets defiantly claimed that their socialism was "real socialism", implying that other models of socialism were unrealistic.