(forgive me but this short comment gave me quite a bit to think about :P)
It's definitely necessary to have accurate information to keep things running, but there are certain aspects of the notion of 'accurate information' when it serves an ideological purpose that are pretty unexpected.
For instance, Stalin believed his doctors were part of a conspiracy to kill him, so he would have his doctors and those of all top officials arrested and tortured, to the point of forced confession. The crime was not simply planning to murder, but planning to kill sacred revolutionaries [0].
This example is typical of the Stalinist concept of "objective guilt": it does not matter there wasn't a shred of evidence to the conspiracy. The ideals were used falsely to prove lies as true - not because the ideals were meaningless or because they were there to justifying any whim. But because swifter and harsher punishment would go to the one articulating why it was obvious no one really actually believed the stated rules. That instead they all obeyed unspoken, subjective rules - externally praising Soviet ideals only to avoid causing themselves horrible punishment. That the system they called objective was actually extremely repressive because of its sheer intersubjectivity..
Though upon reflection, it provokes two questions: "Why could the same Stalin who either truly believed his subjective will was the actual manifestation of historical necessity, or merely dictated as if he did, hold office - during some of the 20th's century's more turbulent periods - for as long as 30 years? And why is it that the reimagined "visionary-yet-non-pathological" Soviet Party that followed Stalin - despite its repudiation of his cult of personality - was even less capable of 'making the right mistakes' towards securing its existence?"
Although one may be forced to say a lie, one will hold no illusions as hubristic as 'having made the correct mistakes' in brutal dictatorships - things are shitty. But when you become self-congratulatory, you hold more illusions. If I lack awareness of my tendency to underestimate my (recursive) uncertainty of my uncertainty of my self-evaluations, I would frequently wonder: "Gee! As if by chance - and without any understanding or memory of what they had in common - all these remote events - which I have disastrously underprepared for - just seem to keep happening to me! And with remarkable consistency"!
I'm not sure if or how China's approach will succeed or fail. But China doesn't have the same illusions as the USSR did about revisionism (and its antithesis). And, the Chinese government does have an external system it is both invested in and holds itself accountable to; one that is also a far less uncertain measure of success than any sort of internal affairs department - the entire world economy.
[0] http://www.lacan.com/zizstalin.htm