Mao dies of a heart attack in 1956. Mao believed that Kruschev was a revisionist because of deStalinization. Mao's political beliefs unfortunately matched Stalin's, and that's why he didn't want Stalin's legacy going away. Also, with Mao dead before the Great Leap Foward (which horrified the Soviet Union as one of the greatest economic mistakes in a command economy), Liu Shaoqi would probably be the top man. Liu is a very practical leader, and seeing that China was still in the middle of post war reconstruction, he would have welcomed Soviet aid.
Problem is, the Soviets didn't want China to have a nuclear bomb (even before the split, they promised China a sample nuclear weapon and never delivered) and wanted to keep China firmly in its circle of influence. Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai were nationalists first and communists second, and both very practical people, so they knew that China couldn't keep chilling with the Soviets though. They wouldn't dare antagonize the Soviets, but they'd distance themselves by the 70's and make mends with the US to play both sides against one another, much like OTL.
The only real difference is there would've been no risk of war and China's economy would develop faster, both because of the no-Mao thing and because of early Soviet aid that might last even until the 1970's.