Did Mao Tse Tung oppress his people as much as Stalin and Pot Pol did?

Answer 1

I'd say no, because he never had the personal control that Stalin and Pol Pot did. Adjusted for the size of the population, Pol Pot's killing fields have to win this contest and for straight out crazy marching entire urban populations into the jungle is hard to beat. A bit like comparing Charles Manson to Andrei Chikatilo, sure they're both serial killers, but Chikatilo worked at it.

China never had the numbers of secret police that Russia had and I find it hard to hang all the blame of the Cultural Revolution on Mao, when so much of it was grass roots communist party members and students running wild.

Mao may have killed as many with starvation caused by ridiculous top down edicts, but I don't find the same evidence of deliberately targeting entire ethnic groups for famine as you do with Stalin. More stupidity than outright malice.

Answer 2

Probably. There were no killing fields as there were in Cambodia, but Mao treated his people with disdain and disrespect. He did not care how they lived, as long as he looked good internationally.

One thing that really struck me was that Mao sent food aid to Hungary (??) when his people were starving, and when the amount of meat eaten by Hungarians every year was many times that eaten by Chinese.