Mao was good but made human mistakes, President Xi tells China

China's 'Great Helmsman' Mao Zedong was no god and ''made mistakes'', the country's President Xi Jinping said on Thursday at a state occasion to mark the 120th birth anniversary of China's first Communist leader.

In a speech at the Great Hall of the People, Xi laid out his judgment on the founder of the People's Republic of China, who is alternately adored for unifying the Chinese people under communist rule and reviled for his disastrous political campaigns that destroyed millions of lives.

''Revolutionary leaders are not gods, but human beings; (we) cannot worship them like gods or refuse to allow people to point out and correct their errors just because they are great; neither can we totally repudiate them and erase their historical feats just because they made mistakes. We should not simply attribute the success in historically favourable circumstances to individuals, nor should we blame individuals for setbacks in adverse conditions,'' Xi said.

Despite sections of the press making a big deal of his criticism of Chairman Mao, President Xi was doing little more than endorsing the long-held official line that the initiator of disastrous steps like the 'Great Leap Forward' and the 'Cultural Revolution' was 70 per cent good and 30 per cent bad.

The Chinese are known by travellers to have a penchant for reducing everything to percentages, and the general view among the Chinese public today seems to have modified the figures on Mao to '60 per cent good, 40 per cent bad'. But significantly, Xi's own father Xi Zhongxun, a communist revolutionary elder, was persecuted during the chaotic decade of the Cultural Revolution.

Since coming to power last year as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi has praised the spirit of Mao Zedong Thought, a paean to revolutionary class struggle that might seem at odds with modern-day China. Xi has revived Maoist notions like ''mass line'' campaigns designed to reinvigorate the party through nationwide soul-searching and house-cleaning.

As defender of a party committed to continuing its rule of the People's Republic, Xi on Thursday praised Mao as ''a great figure who changed the face of the nation and led the Chinese people to a new destiny''.

Apart from Xi, Premier Li Keqiang and other top leaders visited the Mao mausoleum here to pay their respects.

Thousands queued through the night near his childhood home in Shaoshan, Hunan, to see a huge fireworks display which is said to have lasted four hours. Many more made the pilgrimage to the village to mark the anniversary.

After victory over the Nationalists in 1949, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic and became its first leader. However, many of the policies he oversaw proved disastrous. The Great Leap Forward of collectivised farming and rapid industrialisation led to nationwide famine which killed between 10 million and 35 million people.

Subsequently, the Cultural Revolution from 1966, which he launched to purge political opponents, dragged on for 10 years and ruined the lives and educations of a whole generation, making Mao disliked in China and reviled abroad.