The last emperor of China was Mao Zedong. One of Deng Xiaoping's most important achievements after Mao's death was to rid the system of an all-powerful head, the charismatic figure around which the whole system revolved. The Mandate of Heaven perished in 1976, which is why the pre- and post-Maoist political systems have almost nothing in common despite the fact that they were both nominally communist.
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