What if Mao Zedong hadn't outlawed Confucianism in China?

One of the more interesting and unusual leadership acts in Mao Zedong's career -- and Mao was rather notable for unusual and interesting leadership acts, he was an extremely creative guy -- was his decision to outlaw Confucianism in China. This is particularly interesting because Mao was himself a distinguished Confucian scholar, with a great respect for Confucianism. Now, of course, since his death, Confucianism has gradually been revived in China, at least to some degree. But, certainly Confucius is no longer the basis of all learning, as it was in China for two thousand years. For two thousand years the entire Chinese power structure was constrained by the need for all civil servants to pass rigorous exams on Confucian scholarship, and little if anything else. Another requirement was self-castration, as only Eunuchs could be trusted near the imperial Mandarin ladies. Is there a kind of eerie parallel here -- true scholarship is intellectual self-castration? In any case, Mao was undoubtedly acting quite consciously in the tradition of the first Quin emperor some two thousand years earlier. It was this first great Chinese emperor who coined the classic Chinese phrase 焚書坑儒 fén shū kēng rú "Burn the books, and bury the Confucian scholars alive!" The idea here is that scholars, although they have their uses, can be an obstacle to progressive change. Scholars are clever, scholars are obstinate, scholars are self-interested and scholars tend to be conservative, favoring traditional approaches, rather than new ones. Put another way, scholars can use their intellectual skill to confuse and manipulate, rather than to foster progress. This is a concept that is certainly at least as old as Classical Greece, and Socrates' and Plato's observations about Sophists and Sophistry. Effectively, Mao's outlawing of Confucianism was an aggressive act of intellectual reform, intended to break the intellectual chains imposed by traditional scholarship, and lead to progress and constructive change in Communist China. Given that Mao succeeded in ending 150 years of Civil War in China, and China is currently one of the two great superpowers in the world, one would have to say that he was fairly successful. So, what if Confucianism hadn't been outlawed? What if Confucius had remained the fundamental basis for all government and learning in Communist China?