JINGGANGSHAN (China): In the fog-shrouded mountains of China’s Jiangxi province, where eight decades ago a motley band of communist rebels took refuge among the cypress trees and bamboo, Mao Zedong is undisputed number one.

Never mind that he wasn’t at the time — Mao was just one of several communist leaders who, in 1927, fled with a few thousand to these hills, hounded and outnumbered by Nationalist forces.

Nor was he top dog when they broke through Nationalist lines in 1934 and left Jiangxi on a treacherous, year-long odyssey that came to be called the Long March.

Mao died 30 years ago this Saturday. The anniversary will pass with limited fanfare in China, where the line between Mao history and myth is kept as blurry as his legacy is mixed.

In Jinggangshan, where Mao’s career as a revolutionary began to take off, the economy revolves around his memory.

“This is Mao’s place,” said a cafe owner here.

Mao’s picture hangs in mantelpiece shrines. Statues and busts of the Great Helmsman, huge ones, can be bought almost everywhere. His image graces lanyards, lapel pins, refrigerator magnets, keychains, pen jars and plates, all for sale.

Here, tourists pour through Mao’s old homes, a solemn hilltop martyr’s memorial and other ‘red’ sites celebrating the heroism of the Great Helmsman and his band of brothers.

“It’s good luck to come to Jinggangshan, people say. If you are in business, you’ll get rich. If you’re an official, you’ll be promoted,” said Xiao Shang, a guide at a local attraction.

As a young rebel with a radical mind and endless ambition, Mao is credited with building the previously urban-centred communists’ first rural base in Jinggangshan. It was a departure from communist orthodoxy and he would later come to articulate the importance of the peasantry, not just urban workers.

Mao’s communists may have won the civil war in 1949, but the political turmoil continued. He persecuted intellectuals, caused a famine that some say killed 30 million people or more — the party has yet to declassify the figures — and plunged China into a decade of chaos.

History serves politics here. Sensitive topics are diluted or avoided. Mao’s excesses are glossed over: the 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement; the 1958 Great Leap Forward which resulted in the epic famine; the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Even in his formative years in Jiangxi, Mao’s harsh side was on display during a spasm of violence in which thousands were tortured to confess they were members of an anti-Bolshevik faction and summarily executed.

“It was the first time we know he did it in a spectacular way,” said Steve Tsang, a Chinese history and politics specialist at Oxford’s St. Anthony’s College. “I think it had an impact on how he handled things 20 or 30 years down the line.”

In 1981, the party took stock of the shrewd Hunan peasant’s record, deciding that he was 70 per cent good and 30 per cent bad. The book on Mao has been closed since, all debate proscribed.

China has come a long way since; why can’t Mao be re-examined?

“The Communist Party of the Soviet Union could de-Stalinise because they still had Lenin to fall back on,” said Tony Saich of Harvard University. “The Chinese Communist Party can’t do that because Mao is both their Stalin and their Lenin.”

To most, the true history of Mao doesn’t matter much. China is prospering and the ideals he espoused are becoming history.—Reuters