By Michael Dixon

With the 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China approaching, it is truly time to celebrate. For six decades, China has been free of control by the "foreign devils"; its economy is the third-largest in the world and will soon be the second-largest. Times are good for the Middle Kingdom. But much credit has to be given to the Man for All Seasons: Mao Zedong.

Mao was a remarkable person and modern day China might not be here but for him. In the miracle of the country becoming a first class nation, Mao was probably absolutely required.

In comparing Mao to Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon was not there at the start of the French Revolution, but Mao was at the birth of the Communist Party in China in 1921. Napoleon was a great general, but so was Mao. The Long March was one of greatest military accomplishments of all time, making some military experts put Mao is the same league as Napoleon. But while Napoleon could win the war, he could not win peace. He ended up in exile and France had to have 15 more years of a Bourbon Monarch. Mao won the battle and the peace. China drove out the Nationalists, won peace and kept the revolution going. Not only was Mao an excellent general, he was also a most capable politician.

Winston Churchill was a war hero, but he was never a general in command of a large army on the field as was Mao. Churchill went to a military school for four years, while Mao learned on the job. Abraham Lincoln was a great leader, but only a corporal in the army. Julius Caesar was great general and set up the Roman Empire, but he failed as a politician and was murdered at a relatively early age which just caused another Roman civil war.

Alexander the Great was a great general, but he drank himself to death at the age of 33 and his empire dissolved. Adolf Hitler had great military successes, but he could not win peace among other things.

Possibly Mao could be compared to Peter the Great of Russia who greatly expanded Russia as a general and brought Russia out of the dark ages and turned it into a modern nation. However, Peter inherited the rank of the Czar of All the Russias, while Mao went through the school of hard knocks to be the leader of China. Mao's climb from the bottom to the top was as great as Lincoln's.

George Washington was a not a great general. At the final battle of Yorktown in the American Revolutionary War, a French general was in command and not Washington. Napoleon admired him, but Washington was not in his class. Washington did not take part in the Declaration of Independence of America, nor was he a member of the Constitution Convention. He was not a great politician. George was a good leader and did help secure that the United States would be a democracy, but America might have come about without him. It is hard to say that modern day China would be here without Mao. I may have offended every American by saying there are great Chinese -- some even more accomplished than Washington.

Mao was at the founding of the Communist Party of China, a guerilla fighter, a brilliant general, and led China for almost 30 years. It was Mao who had the foresight to see that the struggle would not be won in the cities by workers, but by the peasants in the fields. By studying Chinese history, Mao came to realize the true revolutionaries in China were the peasants and they lived in the country, not the city. As a result he promoted it and guerilla warfare, and the Communists began to win battles. Mao was the first to realize that what worked in Russia's revolution would not work in China's.

Of course, Mao paid for being a pragmatist and expressed new ideas against the accepted doctrine. When the Long March started in 1936, Mao was out of power. But when it ended, he was the leader. He had the best ideas, was the best general, and the most capable leader. Mao also had the ability to predict it would take 30 years to win the battle, almost estimating to the year.

When it comes to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, even Chinese leaders admit that Mao was probably right 70 percent of the time. But revolutions are not pretty. The French Revolution had its Terror and then 26 years of continuous warfare. Few times in European history have so many died. The Russians suffered more in their revolution than their contemporaries. Also, today's China is a success story and Russia is a failure, which China can attribute to more than just luck.

A Chinese village elder once said to me, "Mao made China stand up. Deng let us make money." Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated under Mao and he rose to power a few years after Mao's death. Under Deng, the Chinese were slowly allowed to develop a market economy. Deng was a remarkable person who let bygones be bygones, accepted things as they were and helped build a strong China and a booming economy. The rise of such a remarkable and capable leader was not just luck. Mao had his hand in it.

In a book called, The 100 Most Influential People in History, the author listed Peter the Great in the top 50. That would put Mao in the top 50 of the most influential people in history. I felt fortunate to have met an 85-year-old Chinese man who said he had met Mao.

He was truly a man for all seasons. Some day Americans and Europeans might accept that Asians and Moslems also have great people among them.