Pretty much all Communist Parties made similar types of distinction throughout history. The idea that "all salaried employees are working-class/workers/proletariat" is a recent American-led revision after Occupy Wall Street that some have the audacity to present as Marxist dogma.
This isn't to say non-worker masses are "not oppressed" or "not revolutionary". All Communist Parties were the parties of workers AND peasants, and the CPC is the party of the whole "Chinese people" of which workers are the vanguard but not all the laboring people.
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