politics - Was Mao Zedong 100 percent wrong?

Former Shanghai-correspondent of The Guardian John Gittings takes on the new take of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday on Mao Zedong in their impressive biography, Mao, the Unknown Story. (Tip by the China Digital Times).
Officially in China Mao Zedong is 'seventy percent good, thirty percent wrong', although the official verdict carefully avoids both discussion and nasty details about the wrongs are limited to the biographers abroad. Chang and Halliday now identify the former chairman as 100 percent wrong and Gittings challenges rightfully that perception.

First, can the Chinese revolution really be explained, as the authors imply, as if the Chinese people were terrorised by Mao into overthrowing the Nationalist government - did they not already have good reason?

And:

Second, to what extent does "lust for power" adequately explain Mao's long career with the Communist party? Even if he was attracted by its revolutionary violence, would it not have been more rational to hitch himself to the rising star of Chiang Kai-shek (who was not averse to shedding blood himself)? Third, although Mao's grasp of Marxist theory in his early years was shaky, were his extensive theoretical writings over five decades really nothing more than camouflage for his ambition?

Buy the biography here