HONG KONG -- Not all modern Chinese leaders are alike. First there was Mao Zedong. History's judgment suggests he could and should have done a lot better as boss man of the Middle Kingdom after the World War II, to say the least.
The latest reviews and assessments in the United States are rather disastrous for his legacy. The founder of modern Communist China has been getting the full demystification-downsizing treatment. A new book, "Mao: The Unknown Story," now being widely reviewed, lays out a most negative story line.
It portrays the revolutionary leader as more evil than the second coming of a conflation of Attila the Hun and Count Dracula (and that would be on one of his better days). But Mao may more or less have deserved this.