ABSTRACT
The adulation Mao Zedong received in China during his lifetime and the outpouring of national grief evoked by his death may have appeared excessive, but they were not wholly irrational. In speaking of the ruthlessness with which China's revolution had to be conducted, Mao compared his own position and that of the Qin Shihuang, the emperor who in the third century BC had created China as a nation. Mao never became a slave to Marxist theory; he interpreted the theory to suit his purposes for China. His attempt to revolutionise the Chinese economy in the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s ended in the death from starvation of many millions. Further millions died or suffered during the Cultural Revolution when Mao tried during the last ten years of his life to impose a binding political correctness not only on his contemporaries but on China perpetually.
