Was Mao Zedong evil or incompetent?

Answer 1

If my choices are simply those two, I would say that Mao was more evil than incompetent, but he was certainly both, to the extent that those terms have meaning. Incompetence is rather easy to define, e.g. it is failing to have the skills and performance necessary to adequately perform the job. Evil is much more difficult to define, with the ideas of good and evil being amorphous and personally dependent. If we take the definition of evil to mean "desiring to perform objectives that the majority of people would deem harmful to other people", then my statement stands.

Mao definitely showed levels of incompetence as regards the management of China's command economy, but far more evil in promoting the Cultural Revolution through the formation of a totalitarian government, creating systems of snitching, and developing a cultural context for China where all uniqueness and individuality were criminalized and tortured. The Cultural Revolution in China was responsible for the largest democide in world history, 80 million Chinese died, through a system designed by Mao to intentionally homogenize China.