Maoism has long been considered as quite distinct from its Soviet inspiration.

During the Cold War, except for hardcore Cold Warriors to whom all Communists
were identical, there was a relatively broad consensus about the specificities of
Chinese communism, generally identified with Maoism.
Actually these two terms are not synonymous. The term Maoism does not exist in
Chinese, but the CCP coined the term Mao-Zedong-thought to refer
to Maos reading of Marxism. Usually when historians talk of Maoism they refer
more broadly to one strand in Chinese communism, embodied and supported by
Mao, but not limited to the actions or thought of one person. Some people argue
that the early years of the PRC (from the Revolution in 1949 to the earliest
manifestations of the Great Leap Forward) were of course Communist Chinese,
but Maoist, meaning that the peculiarities of Maoism were not expressed very
clearly during that period.
Mao made much of the PRCs (and his) specificities compared with the USSR, at
least after Stalin died in 1953. His arguments were more or less taken up by
foreign observers. In this view, what made Maoism special was the adaptation of
Marxism or Marxism-Leninism to the Chinese reality actually, of Stalinism
would be more appropriate the model Mao and most of his comrades learned
from was Stalinism. The CCP was created in 1921 but it was tiny at that time, and
even his leaders had a very poor knowledge of what Communism was supposed
to be. Until 1927 there is a variety of influences exerted through the Comintern
(Boukharin, Trotski, Stalin), but after 1927 and the beginning of the civil war
with the Guomindang the main influence is Stalinism (Stalin himself eliminating
his rivals in the USSR around the same time).
The differences with Soviet communism according to this version are:
1

the heavy emphasis laid on the peasantry and the need, in Maos words, to
walk on two legs, i.e. not to neglect agricultural/rural development
(including small-scale industrialization in rural areas) like he thought the
Soviets had done
guerilla warfare as the main tool of victory. This is connected to the
previous point, since guerilla warfare implies being able to hide in the
countryside, hence to be close to the peasants. In Maos words again,
guerillas must hide in the population like a fish in water (actually this is
probably apocryphal, but whatever)
a very critical take on bureaucracy, a kind of ultra-leftist egalitarian
tendency very hostile to the privileges of the nomenklatura (as opposed,
for instance, to Stalin, who cared very little about this and even built his
power base on it).

What do we make of all this?

1

About the peasantry. It is undeniable that Mao (himself a peasant) and his
comrades were conscious that China was even more overwhelmingly rural
than Russia in 1917, and had to deal with it. The land reform was impulse
by the state in China (in Russia it was mostly anarchical), which helped
strengthen the relationship between the Communists and the peasants.
After 1949, industrialization (and therefore urbanization) could only
proceed at a relatively slow pace, and the CCP leadership prevented a
mass influx of peasants into cities through a residence permit system (the
hukou). And during the Great Leap Forward, it is true that Mao encouraged

peasants to develop small-scale industries in the countryside. However the

general thrust of economic policies was actually profoundly Stalinist: the
capital for industrial development was extracted from the peasants
through state monopoly on the purchase of agricultural products and then
(after 1956-1958) rural collectivization. And just like in Stalins USSR, this
provoked a massive famine. The peasants were basically starved to
develop the industry.
About guerilla warfare. Yes, but this was a strategy adopted by default in
1927 when the Guomindang decided to suppress the CCP. It was not a
brilliant innovation but a survival strategy. And the idea of using the
peasants to conquer power is not Maos Lenin, and then mostly Bukharin
had put it forward in the 1920s, and Stalin very much agreed that this was
necessary in colonized or semi-colonized backward countries. The 1927
flight to the campaigns did produce an important effect though: the
revolution took on the concrete meaning of territorialized, armed conflict
i.e. of a civil war. In China the civil war happened before the revolution, in
Russia after. This model creating a territorialized armed force and fighting
the state from there, gradually expanding controlled areas was to prove
very important in Third World communism (see Vietnam for instance, or
for a failure the Maoist insurgencies of Malaya and to a lesser extent
India). And for all these people Mao, as a strategist, is clearly a reference.
But remember that this course of events was imposed on the Chinese
Communists, they did not chose it.
About the critique of the bureaucracy. Mao actually played a major role in
building the dictatorial and privileged party he then criticized. Here there is
a true contradiction, which is not only Maos but pertains to every
revolutionary movement. When you take power you stop being
revolutionary, by definition. This is all the more difficult to deal with when
you have a strong mystique of the revolutionary times of guerilla
warfare, when Communists were pure, did not seek material gratifications,
etc. Mao embodies this tension. Hes a Stalinist despot, no doubt, but he
also misses his young years as a fiery revolutionary guerilla leader. Since
he refuses to see that the problem of bureaucracy (privileges,
authoritarianism, professionalization, etc.) is systemic and endogenous to
the very system (basically, Stalinism) he built, his only answer is an
overemphasis on subjective criteria, i.e. ideological purity and
motivation. If the communist cadres behave like bureaucrats, its because
they think wrong. He even goes as far as saying that the Party is becoming
a new bourgeoisie, not by Marxist (that is, economic) terms, but because it
is imbued with bourgeois ideology - something Stalin would never have
said. This bourgeois ideology must be rectified by political mobilization:
this is the Cultural Revolution, a Stalinist term to which Mao gives a
different meaning. For Mao, the Cultural Revolution meant mobilizing the
fanaticized youth (the Red Guards) against the Party, the underlying idea
(pushed to its extreme consequences) being that every generation must
make its own revolution if the revolutionary spirit is to live on. This, again,
is very original, probably the most truly original feature of Maoism
compared to Stalinism. Of course, the Red Guards create a big mess, the
party is split between factions, the country is threatened with civil war and
the Communist revolution in danger of ending. So Mao sends the army
(and different militias), which kills scores of people (this begins in 1967-

68). And he dies an old Stalinist despot in 1976. Stalinism prevails in the
end.