Mao died in 1976, and Deng Xiaoping over the course of the next two decades took China on a dramatically different course.  But Mao's legacy remains very significant for China as it prepares to enter the 21st Century.  One side effect of Mao's policies that is still being felt has to do with population growth.  Throughout his long reign, Mao encouraged population growth, especially since his model of economic development (as represented by the Great Leap Forward) was labor intensive rather than capital intensive (i.e. based on technology).  Consequently, Mao looked upon population growth as a positive development because China, in his view, would need all the workers and soldiers it could get.  The problem was that food production could not keep up with population growth.  One of the policy changes implemented by Deng was to limit population growth, sometimes through draconian measures such as sterilization.  This scene of a busy city street in China's capital, Beijing, is a microcosmic look at China's huge population problem, one of the many problems left by Mao for his followers to contend with.  Source:  Keith Buchanan, China:  The Land and the People (New York:  Crown Publishers, 1980).