[Heibges]

I agree about the cult of personality in China. Whether Mao happens to be in or out of favor, he is the founder of the PRC, so they have to build their legitimacy upon him. Much like Stalin first built the Cult of Lenin just so that he could later build the Cult of Stalin upon it. And then you have this wave revisitionist historians trying to say that Lenin was just a swell guy, especially compared to Stalin.

I'm not saying they are the equivalent, just that the types of endeavors they embarked upon made them very popular with their populations, despite other heinous acts they may have committed.

Those guys were popular for many of the same reason George Washington is popular in America.

I know a lot of Chinese folks here in San Francisco, and the scary things I hear from them is not so much that he didn't do anything wrong, but that they don't perceive what he did as wrong. But maybe that's the same thing?

But the idea that if 5 million folks had to die to free China from opium then so be it, is a fairly common opinion amongst Chinese immigrants that I know.

Mao accomplished what the Boxers had been unable to a hundred years before: getting the Westerners out.

This sort of makes him the George Washington of China.