Perhaps he barely kept them alive, if you're making a claim like that you also need to post a source though.
I don't know a lot about the Chinese history from before Mao, but Mao did win the civil war because of the help of the peasants.
But I'd rather be dead when I'm 35 then to live 35 more years under the reign of crazy psychopath. It's a shame really, if Mao didn't do all those crazy stuff he would have been remembered as a great writer/poet







