Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung to westerners) was remembered and revered as a great revolutionary hero. However, his achievements as a ruler have been severely impaired because he was amongst the worst politicians. On the political spectrum, Mao Zedong is considered a left wing dictator because he created a communist government (which gave him the name of a `leftist'), he forbade any opinions other than his own, and he believed that the government should have absolute authority over the country.

Prior to becoming the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Mao Zedong studied numerous of books on Marxism. Around 1918, he adapted to the theory of Marxist-Lenin and sought to improve on it. Lenin's theory states that there are 5 levels of government: feudalist being the lowest, capitalist, imperialist, socialist, and communist being the highest (http://www.marxists.org). This knowledge was embedded in the mind of Mao Zedong, and...