That is just factually false. Mao rose to power after a series of stunning military successes against the KMT such as his 1935 long march organized retreat. Like many communists leaders he was brilliant at two things (military strategy and political manipulation) that got him into power, but a terrible human being and grossly incompetent in all things economic policy related. That's why we have to dig deeply into these historical moments, as they more often enough mirror what we face today with modern leftists. They are masters of political maneuvering and appealing to primal levels of human emotion. But lucky for us they (leftists) have used the same rulebook for 50 years, so if we study history enough we can know how to counteract their cultural revolution. If we reduce they though (leftists) into a simplified view ("them") we will fail. We will fail to realize that this is in fact not so much a conspiracy, but more so a much more dangerous prospect, a collective cultural mind virus that has slowly been permeating into our thought processes. It's scary to face, as there are few ways to kill a mind virus, as it's decentralized to such a degree and most can't stomach to accept it.