section_path: Legacy
section_name: Legacy
paragraph_text: Legacy
  
  Mao has been regarded as one of the most important and influential individuals in the 20th century. He has also been described as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, poet, and visionary. He was credited and praised for driving imperialism out of China, having unified China and for ending the previous decades of civil war. He has also been credited with having improved the status of women in China and for improving literacy and education. In December 2013, a poll from the state-run Global Times indicated that roughly 85% of the 1,045 respondents surveyed felt that Mao's achievements outweighed his mistakes. It has been said in China that Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong.
  
  His policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his reign, done through starvation, persecution, prison labour in laogai, and mass executions. Mao rarely gave direct instruction for peoples' physical elimination. According to Philip Short, the overwhelming majority of those killed by Mao's policies were unintended casualties of famine, while the other three or four million, in Mao's view, were necessary victims in the struggle to transform China. Mao's China has been described as an autocratic and totalitarian regime responsible for mass repression. Mao was accused as one of the great tyrants of the twentieth century. Mao was frequently likened to the First Emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang.
  
  China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million under his rule. Mao's insurgency strategies continue to be used by insurgents, and his political ideology continues to be embraced by many Communist organisations around the world.