Mao

Mao is one of three peasants in China’s history who has risen to rule its billion or so people in a single lifetime. He destroyed Nationalist power, unified China and oversaw the greatest social reform in man’s history. He is recognised as a leader in Marxist doctrine, and his theories have been acclaimed in many third-world unindustrialised nations.
He did, indeed, develop Marxist-Leninism comprehensively, changing it from the traditional worker orientated system to a joint worker-peasant society. This was far more suited to the region, as the ‘broad masses’ of Asian nations were peasants in unindustrialised countries where food was considered far more important than political freedom. Countries affected by the Communist movement in Asia include Indonesia, East Timor, Malaysia, Laos, Mongolia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, North & South Korea and Vietnam.
He will also be remembered as a military tactician. His adaptation of guerilla techniques from the writings of ancient military experts stood him in good stead in the civil war, which he probably would have lost in any other circumstances.
It was only recently that China commemorated the 20th anniversary of Mao’s death, and from news coverage of that we can see many Chinese people still worship Mao as a demi-god, and the saviour of their people. And, indeed, living standards in China have risen substantially in the past 50 years - in a country where there is a one-child policy in place, expenditure on children’s toys has multiplied four-fold from pre-one-child days. There is much less abject poverty as a result of reforms, and today China is making serious efforts to improve human rights, the most recent of which is the promise to sign the Human Rights Declaration of the United Nations.
However, generally the reforms have leveled out China with the result that now, while there are no beggars on the street, the vast majority of the population still live in relative poverty and spend most of theirs days tilling fields or doing menial work in factories, the main enjoyment of comfort by Western standards being restricted to Party officials and some factory owners.
Mao also maintained relative isolation from the rest of the world, with only shaky and shallow relations with the USSR and belated exchanges with the US in the 1970’s just before his death. Otherwise China only tried to align itself with other poorer, peasant-based nations fit for socialist reforms.

Mao will be remembered as a socialist, a poet, a military strategist and ruthless ruler. He has earned his place among the most powerful rulers of the world.