Between the labor camps, the misguided Great Leap Forward, and the horrors of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, is it small wonder why untold millions of Chinese were killed by labor camps, famine and flat-out genocidal liquidation? The original Soviet estimate published in 1976 of 56,000,000 killed during the time of Mao's rule was probably not far from the truth, either.
And you openly wonder why the Left still embraces Mao Zedung as a great leader, even though we now know the truth. 
I don't wonder...the Left embraces a culture of death...Mao was just very efficient in their eyes...and, of course, the Left can embrace him because he was an enemy of the US.
mark
I'm hoping that one of my bookclubs will be offering this book. If not I can add it to the list of books that I want to get by the end of the year.
The joke's on him. I have been to Tienanmien Square where he is entombed. If Mao could see through the walls he would see Colonel Sanders smiling down on him. (I kid you not) I half suspect the Chinese did this on purpose. They have a long tradition of this sort of subtle humiliation of their leaders.
The slaughter of 56 million means no more to the left than a liberal president who is accused of rape. The Marxist concept that no sacrifice is too great or immoral so long as the cause is advanced has permeated liberal/Democratic thinking. They ARE useful IDIOTS!
My wife has told me some incredible stories of what she and her family went through in the Cultural Revolution.
I've been to China a few times, and one of the things that amazes me is that Mao's picture still hangs on the wall of many households there, mostly in the rural areas.
Happily, much of the younger generation has no love for him, and maybe the time will come in the near future when Mao will finally be buried (physically and figuratively).
Could Christiana Amanpour of CNN be todays Simone de Beauvoir
I was not surprised to see Chairman Mao listed as number one. They claim 60 million. Not sure where their figures come from but the surely must have had some proof of the claim.
For the same reason they embrace Karl Marx as a great thinker and remain silent on the predations of Josef Stalin and Fidel Castro. For the same reason they revere the cowardly Che Guevara and the sleazy Eva Peron. Part of it is a misplaced sense of romanticism; they glorify these vermin as "little people" who fought the Establishment and won. Never mind that few accomplished anything on their own; they stole it from someone else or married it. And their accomplishments are always promissory notes payable in somebody else's blood.
More than that, they are all proof that socialism can ascend. Now, granted, it makes a mess of everything it touches, but the pantheon of liberal heros reminds the vanishing liberal that even idiots can still have hope.
bttt