"Had he been purely an economic thinker, then Mao would have been consigned to the dustbin of history the day he died in September 1976. Evidence of the failure of his economic ideas is manifold. But of course, economics is more often than not intimately linked to emotions and ideas of status. It is here that the other two strands of Maoism come to the fore – Mao as a nationalist and Mao as a tactician. In areas that can be broadly described as geopolitics and politics, Mao still retains impact in China."