"The liberals/doves in China are already marginalised" That is an interesting point, because someone chipped-in the question, if there had ever been liberals/doves in the higher echelons of the party, or if that has always been only a bait, dangling in front to western liberals/doves.

There are certainly liberals, albeit not in a western sense, but either they are Stalin's useful idiots, in which case they may carry on for a while, or they go into "hiding" in a futile attempt to avoid eradication. Everything any party official has ever said is a matter of record, you can't escape a serious purge.