blowininthewind

perhaps the best thing can be said about mao is that he did not intend to do 99% of it. i think he's below average when it comes to math and natural science and too gifted in social sciences, and he lets his ego get in his way. he scored 60 out of 100 in math in a normal school after studying very hard to review the subject, but wrote an essay that impressed his teacher (decent intellectual in those times) so much that he got 105 out of 100 points. his philosophy comes from wang yangming, a revered intellectual in china and japan.(yet wang yangming proposed something much like reinforcement learning that continues to winnow the good from the bad in a poem of his, a humble gradualism arrogantly overlooked in mao's later years.) he believes that the human will alone can dominate natural rules, which led to a period of great stagnation in post-war china. towards the end of cultural revolution, he expressed regret toward outing more practical officials in the ccp. onto the attitude toward mao in china. the public discourse is not in favor of him, to say the least. his true believers are quite weak and far away from mainstream discourse these days. (some revival i'd say, some chauvinism out of a richer china, which is not good.) old people still remember him as a good leader or a horrible leader, depending on their status during his years. (younger generation don't bother cause they have anime, comics, and games other than way too much work.) mao is above all a poetic ruler, if you examine his face you'd find feminine traits. his blind romanticism fueled by ego, however, did great harm to china when it comes to science and running the country. one can argue that all communist regimes (ussr, mao's china, etc.) are good at coming to power but are not good at constructing infrastructures and running economies and feeding its subjects compared to other ideologies and societies.