I certainly hope you don't find my prior post to defend anything Mao did. I simply feel that if it wasn't him it would have been someone else's name we affix t

I certainly hope you don't find my prior post to defend anything Mao did. I simply feel that if it wasn't him it would have been someone else's name we affix to some other incalculable amount of suffering. There were and still are in China many that model their behavior after thousand year old stratagems for accumulating and maintaining power. When the last empire was swept away, there were many ready to replace it with another form of empire. If it wasn't someone from the camp that Mao sprang from, it may have been someone from the Chiang Kai-shek camp. As far as "Mao's achievements" goes, we may see these having rather short half-lives throughout society. I find that most Chinese only pay lip service to the current mantras from headquarters. Whatever happens over the next 60 years is anybody's guess.