How far did Mao Ze Dong change the face of China? As China emerged from a half century of revolution as the world's most populous nation and launched itself on a path of economic development and social change, Mao Zedong, its principal revolutionary thinker and for many years its unchallenged leader, occupied a critical place in the story of the country's resurgence. To be sure, he did not play a dominant role throughout the whole …showed first 75 words of 3653 total…

…showed last 75 words of 3653 total…peasants acquiring land against millions of executions and deaths from civil war? How does one balance the real economic achievements after 1949 against the starvation that came in the wake of the Great Leap Forward or the bloody shambles of the Cultural Revolution? It is, perhaps, possible to accept the official verdict that, despite the errors of his later years, Mao's merits outweighed his faults, while underscoring the fact that the account is very finely balanced.