Editing Mao Zedong (section)

=== Outside China ===
{{external media| float = right| width = 230px|video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?155775-1/mao-life ''Booknotes'' interview with Philip Short on ''Mao: A Life'', April 2, 2000], [[C-SPAN]]}}
[[Philip Short]] argued that the overwhelming majority of the deaths under Mao were unintended consequences of famine.{{sfn|Short|2001|p=632}} Short stated that landlord class were not exterminated as a people due to Mao's belief in redemption through thought reform,{{sfn|Short|2001|p=632}} and compared Mao with 19th-century Chinese reformers who challenged China's traditional beliefs in the era of China's clashes with Western colonial powers. Short writes that "Mao's tragedy and his grandeur were that he remained to the end in thrall to his own revolutionary dreams. ... He freed China from the straitjacket of its Confucian past, but the bright Red future he promised turned out to be a sterile purgatory."{{sfn|Short|2001|p=632}}

Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine, in their biography, asserted that Mao was both "a successful creator and ultimately an evil destroyer" but also argued that he was a complicated figure who should not be lionised as a saint or reduced to a demon, as he "indeed tried his best to bring about prosperity and gain international respect for his country."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pantsov |first1=Alexander V. |last2=Levine |first2=Steven I. |date=2013 |title=Mao: The Real Story |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |pages=5–6 |isbn=978-1451654486}}</ref> They also remarked on Mao's legacy: "A talented Chinese politician, an historian, a poet and philosopher, an all-powerful dictator and energetic organizer, a skillful diplomat and utopian socialist, the head of the most populous state, resting on his laurels, but at the same time an indefatigable revolutionary who sincerely attempted to refashion the way of life and consciousness of millions of people, a hero of national revolution and a bloody social reformer—this is how Mao goes down in history. The scale of his life was too grand to be reduced to a single meaning." Mao's English interpreter [[Sidney Rittenberg]] wrote in his memoir that whilst Mao "was a great leader in history", he was also "a great criminal because, not that he wanted to, not that he intended to, but in fact, his wild fantasies led to the deaths of tens of millions of people."<ref name="Reut09"/>

[[File:President Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong.jpg|thumb|Mao greets U.S. President [[Richard Nixon]] during his [[1972 Nixon visit to China|visit to China in 1972]].]]

The United States placed a trade embargo on the People's Republic as a result of its involvement in the [[Korean War]], until [[Richard Nixon]] decided that developing relations with the PRC would be useful.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chen |first=Xin-zhu J. |date=2006 |title=China and the US Trade Embargo, 1950–1972 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44288827 |journal=[[American Journal of Chinese Studies]] |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=169–186 |jstor=44288827 |issn=2166-0042}}</ref> The television series ''[[Biography (TV series)|Biography]]'' stated: "[Mao] turned China from a feudal backwater into one of the most powerful countries in the World. ... The Chinese system he overthrew was backward and corrupt; few would argue the fact that he dragged China into the 20th century. But at a cost in human lives that is staggering."<ref name="Biography 2005"/> Professor [[Jeffrey Wasserstrom]] compares China's relationship to Mao to Americans' remembrance of [[Andrew Jackson]]; both countries regard the leaders in a positive light, despite their respective roles in devastating policies. Jackson forcibly moved Native Americans through the [[Trail of Tears]], resulting in thousands of deaths, while Mao was at the helm.<ref name="Schiavenza 2010">{{cite web |title=Some China Book Notes |url=http://mattschiavenza.com/2010/10/08/some-china-book-notes/ |website=Matt Schiavenza.com |access-date=8 February 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150209022723/http://mattschiavenza.com/2010/10/08/some-china-book-notes/ |archive-date=9 February 2015}}</ref>{{efn|"Though admittedly far from perfect, the comparison is based on the fact that Jackson is remembered both as someone who played a significant role in the development of a political organisation (the Democratic Party) that still has many partisans, and as someone responsible for brutal policies toward Native Americans that are now referred to as genocidal.

Both men are thought of as having done terrible things yet this does not necessarily prevent them from being used as positive symbols. And Jackson still appears on $20 bills, even though Americans tend to view as heinous the institution of slavery (of which he was a passionate defender) and the early 19th-century military campaigns against Native Americans (in which he took part).

At times Jackson, for all his flaws, is invoked as representing an egalitarian strain within the American democratic tradition, a [[self-made man]] of the people who rose to power via straight talk and was not allied with moneyed interests. Mao stands for something roughly similar."<ref name="Schiavenza 2010"/>}}

[[File:MaoStatueinLijang.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Statue of Mao in [[Lijiang, Yunnan|Lijiang]]]]

[[John King Fairbank]] remarked, "The simple facts of Mao's career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land—history records no greater achievement. [[Alexander the Great|Alexander]], [[Julius Caesar|Caesar]], [[Charlemagne]], all the kings of Europe, [[Napoleon]], [[Otto von Bismarck|Bismarck]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]—no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung's scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fairbank |first=John King |author-link=John King Fairbank |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eGbZgYbDVugC&pg=PA276 |title=The United States and China |edition=4th Revised and Enlarged |date=1983 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]|isbn=9780674036642 }}</ref> In ''China: A New History'', Fairbank and Goldman assessed Mao's legacy: "Future historians may conclude that Mao's role was to try to destroy the age-old bifurcation of China between a small educated ruling stratum and the vast mass of common people. We do not yet know how far he succeeded. The economy was developing, but it was left to his successors to create a new political structure."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fairbank |first1=John King |last2=Goldman |first2=Merle |title=China: a new history |date=2006 |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge (Mass.) |isbn=0-674-01828-1 |edition=2nd enlarged}}</ref>

[[Stuart R. Schram]] said that Mao was an "Eternal rebel, refusing to be bound by the laws of God or man, nature or Marxism, [who] led his people for three decades in pursuit of a vision initially noble, which turned increasingly into a mirage, and then into a nightmare. Was he a [[Faust]] or [[Prometheus]], attempting the impossible for the sake of humanity, or a despot of unbridled ambition, drunk with his own power and his own cleverness?"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Schram |first1=Stuart R. |author1-link=Stuart R. Schram |title=The thought of Mao Tse-Tung |date=1989 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] |isbn=978-0521310628}}</ref> Schram also agreed "with the current Chinese view that Mao's merits outweighed his faults, but it is not easy to put a figure on the positive and negative aspects. How does one weigh, for example, the good fortune of hundreds of millions of peasants in getting land against the execution, in the course of land reform and the 'Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries,' or in other contexts, of millions, some of whom certainly deserved to die, but others of whom undoubtedly did not? How does one balance the achievements in economic development during the first Five-Year Plan, or during the whole twenty-seven years of Mao's leadership after 1949, against the starvation which came in the wake of the misguided enthusiasm of the Great Leap Forward, or the bloody shambles of the Cultural Revolution?" Schram added, "In the last analysis, however, I am more interested in the potential future impact of his thought than in sending Mao as an individual to Heaven or to Hell."<ref name="MacFarquhar">{{cite journal |title=Stuart Reynolds Schram, 1924–2012 |last=MacFarquhar |first=Roderick |journal=[[China Quarterly]] |date=December 2012 |volume=212 |issue=212 |pages=1099–1122 |doi=10.1017/S0305741012001518 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

[[Maurice Meisner]] assessed Mao's legacy: "It is the blots on the Maoist record, especially the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, that are now most deeply imprinted on our political and historical consciousness. That these adventures were failures colossal in scope, and that they took an enormous human toll, cannot and should not be forgotten. But future historians, without ignoring the failures and the crimes, will surely record the Maoist era in the history of the People's Republic (however else they may judge it) as one of the great modernizing epochs in world history, and one that brought great social and human benefits to the Chinese people."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Meisner |first1=Maurice J. |title=Mao's China and after: a history of the People's Republic |date=1999 |publisher=Free Press |location=New York, NY |isbn=0684856352 |edition=3.}}</ref>