He said we are prepared to let 300 million Chinese die to achieve our aims.

Famously, he said all power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

He was convinced that politics had to be violent.

When he toured the villages and witnessed the violence and atrocities first hand,

as he said himself, he changed.

He felt a kind of ecstasy as he had never experienced it before.

In the center of China's capital, Beijing lies a corpse that no one dares remove.

It's protected by armed guards under surveillance detail.

Today, the country's ruling communist party officially recognizes this man as an heroic leader.

He's widely held to be the father of the nation.

But many observers both inside and outside of China are far less flattering.

To them, he's a sadistic thug, a man who was willing to sacrifice half of China's population

in pursuing his dream of global domination.

It's been 44 years since Mao Zedong's body was laid to rest in the grandiose Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.

He may be gone, but he's not forgotten.

His portrait is etched into millions of banknotes and stamps,

even painted onto the sides of prominent buildings.

So who was Chairman Mao?

And how did this peasant son chart a cause to absolute power over 600 million people,

changing the cause of history?

Mao didn't try to build a nation, and when Mao destroyed the nation,

he unified China. China was a unified place.

...