Bill Chen
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Student of comparative historyUpdated Nov 18
How different would China be today if Mao did a much better job leading the country (i.e. without running the country into the ground by killing 20+ million people)?
The 26-year rule of China under mao were the BEST years for the mainland Chinese, after suffering horribly for the previous 100 years, or more than 3 generations.

I say this without hyperbole or exaggeration.

Why else is Mao's portrait hanging at tiananmen?

China in 1949 was exhausted from 100 years of conflict. Much of the infrastructure down to dams and roads had been destroyed. The sophisticated Japanese industrial base in Manchuria had been dismantled and shipped to the soviet union.

China was broke, and with the outbreak of the Korean War, embargoed and cut off from international trade.

To put things in perspective, modern China as mao found it couldn't even make synthetic fertilizer. There were millions of opium addicts. Famine and natural disasters were commonplace. The nation was still not at peace, with more than a million bandits and an Islamic insurgency springing up from the ashes of the kmt withdrawal. There was also the minor matter of the Korean War.

It took much of the 50s to bring stable peace to the country.

Despite these immense challenges, Mao's administration brought spectacular improvements. Hunger was eradicated. So were drug addiction, prostitution and organized crime. Land reform gave every Chinese peasant a piece of land and a roof under their heads. Women were emancipated from feudal chains of polygamy and unequal rights. Girls had the same right to pursue an education and participate in the economy. The minorities were recognized and given special rights.

Huge labor pools were mobilized for public works such as irrigation and roads. As a result, grain production tripled, livestock nonupled, poultry quadrupled, fisheries decupled during the mao era, all which fed a population that doubled in 40 years.

Healthcare, nutrition and peace improved the average mortality from 40 to 60.

And so on.

Without the base that Mao's administration provided and the peace that China enjoyed, deng's reforms couldn't have happened.