Mao's integrity

In class one day someone raised the interesting question if Mao had integrity. The initial response from most of the class was no. Millions died under his reign, how could a man with integrity allow that to happen. But when I examined the question more I began to look at it from a different angle. Yes a huge number of people died under Mao's rule but Mao said that people were going to die from the beginning. In one of his speeches he says that violence might have to happen for goals to be reached. This is honesty. Mao is not promising that he will achieve what he wants through non-violnent means. Mao was being honest. Part of having integrity is being honest. The other part is having strong moral values and in Mao's mind he did have them. The Great Leap Forward, while being a complete and utter failure and causing the death of millions of people, had good intentions. Mao was only thinking of his country. He saw that China was behind the rest of the world and he tried to get it up to pace. He could've been selfish and only be interested in his own personal gain. But he kept his own personal interests at bay and while many of his decisions are very questionable in his mind they were always for the better of his country.