Sixty years ago today Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People's Republic of China from atop a gate at the entrance to the Forbidden City.

Thirty million Chinese were to die in Mao's crackpot Great Leap Forward from 1958-61.

Three million were to die during his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-76.

And the most continuously great of the world's civilizations was to continue to degrade the best in the human soul rather than enhance it.