Many foreigners have learned more through their personal experience of the influence of late Chairman Mao Zedong on economic and social development in modern China.

Gerhard Wahl, a German maglev expert, said China's current economic success was an invaluable legacy from Chairman Mao and other late Chinese leaders.

Wahl, a 64-year-old expert from Germany's Siemens AG, has served as the chief German coordinator for the construction of the maglev line in Shanghai, which is soon to go into operation following a one-year trial.

"I heard of Mao as earlier as I was a middle school student, but I know more about Mao and China during my recent three-year work in China," Wahl said.

Wahl said that he knows little about Mao's political thought but he regarded Mao as a man of "integrity, strong will and fearless of difficulty."

He valued Mao's dauntless spirit that is critical important for a nation and a country as well, saying that the spirit could not be discarded and ignored.

Masaharu Yamasaki, a 52-year-old Japanese, said Mao still has influence in the socialist country.

The Communist Party of China committees maintain the core leadership in provinces, autonomous regions and cities across the country and key job positions are held by Party members, said the general manager of the Shanghai International Trade Center Company, jointly funded by China and Japan.

Fifty-six-year-old Takashi Numa, another Japanese who says he knows more than other "China experts" about China for working 12 years in China, said "Mao was a hero in the war field more than 30years ago, but the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976) initiated by him in his later years led to dramatic setback of national economy and living standard of the people.

"Anyway, Mao was a great man because he led the Chinese people to drive away foreign colonists and set the country free from long-term colonial control."

Any country deserves credit for insisting on its own position and stand on the international arena and establishing equal relations with other countries, he said.

Mao (December 1893-September 1976) headed China's first-generation central leadership after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2003)