A new book on Mao, reviewed in the CSM, doesn't paint a pretty picture, even for those who knew how much damage he did.

"There are 2.7 billion people in the world," he once calculated at a world summit with other Communist leaders. "One-third could be lost; or a little more, it could be half ... I say that, taking the extreme situation half dies, half lives, but imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist."

I guess that by his own standards he was a failure. Rather than murdering half the world's population he only managed to kill about 70 million. And to add insult to injury, China is now becoming a capitalist powerhouse.