Mao, 70% Right?

To-day marks the 40th anniversary of the unleashing of the Cultural Revolution by the Great Helmsman. In 1981 Deng Xiaoping uttered what has become the Communist Party's official line concerning the author of not only the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) but also the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s, "Mao, 70% right! 30% wrong!" The two cataclysmic events in themselves were responsible for best estimates of 60 million deaths. So where does one scrounge up the evidence to suggest 70% right? If you were to read the much talked about new book Mao: The Untold Story my guess is you would be hard pressed to come up with 30 wight, but hey I haven't coughed up the money for the book yet. He completed the epic Long March did he not (no taking the subway like that woman fraud in the Boston Marathon some years back) and he fought the Japanese occupation and was one with the peasants? Well maybe not, to all three. To be explored.