Mao was a great revolutionary but a lousy head of state. China would have been much better off had he died shortly after Stalin did.
agreed.
Yep. The Communists weren't even the first Chinese revolutionaries to come up with women's equality, better conditions for the peasants, and so on - that honor goes to the fascinating Christian-inspired Taiping revolutionary movement of the 19th Century. To be fair...the Chinese Communists do admit that the Taipings were the originators of the Chinese Revolutionary spirit.
Seriously, once the land has been redistributed and the literacy rate improved, Communists really should just step down at that point, since they've done about all the good they can do and haven't gotten around to discovering new and interesting ways to spark a mass famine...
