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What legacy did Mao Zedong leave his successors? Mao Zedong is one of the most controversial leaders of the twentieth century. The Chinese people know him both as a survivor and a tyrant. From his tactical success of the Long March to his embarrassing failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao has greatly influenced the result of what China is today. Most of Mao’s major successes have been in the Cap’s rise to power, while Mao’s failure have come at the time when the CCP was in power. To focus on Mao’s legacy one has to illuminate the questions why Mao despite all his big failures and his tyranny hold such a hero status? And how did his successors elude with his controversial legacy? China was a “predominantly rural society, with more than 80% of its people peasants” before Mao came into power. The economic problems were so big that the totalitarianism with which Mao reigned was necessary. “The collectivisation and industrialisation programmes that Mao enforces may not have accorded with civil rights as understood and operated in other nations but China’s needs made them unavoidable.” Mao’s way of reign was ruthless and despotic but it saved China from “disintegration and laid the basis for the ‘revol