Or, at least, a distorted image of him is kept alive by an authoritarian political party too afraid to face up to its own history.  That, at any rate, is what this story in today’s Globe and Mail suggests:

 With gala concerts and flowery tributes, China’s Communist rulers
are paying homage to Mao Zedong this week, marking the 30th anniversary
of his death without any mention of the damage he inflicted on millions
of victims.

More than 500 performers and thousands of elite guests will gather
at the Great Hall of the People tomorrow night to venerate the
Communist leader at a concert titled: "The sun is the reddest and
Chairman Mao is the most beloved."

Eleven of Mao’s poems will be recited at the gala performance of
music and dance in the palatial building on Tiananmen Square where
China’s parliament holds its annual sessions.

    How nice.  No official mention of all the other stuff:

Even three decades after his death, China’s rulers are unwilling to
question the official verdict that Mao was a great leader whose
mistakes were made only in his old age. No serious debate on his legacy
is permitted. The mythology about Mao is deemed vital to preserving the
Communist Party’s legitimacy.

…

Senior leaders have studiously ignored the millions of Chinese who
perished as a result of Mao’s decisions, including his brutal purges of
party members, the persecutions of his Cultural Revolution in the 1960s
and 1970s and the man-made famines that resulted from his industrial
policies in the late 1950s.

 Millions and millions of people died, and Mao’s decisions were central to those many, many deaths. 

    In coming to some general historical assessment of Mao, I find this line from Mencius to be helpful:

There’s only one way to know if people are good or evil: look at the choices they make. (208)

    By that criteria, taking into account the choices involved in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution (other historical moments can be added, but we’ll limit it to these), the only conclusion possible is that Mao was evil.