>worse outcomes long-term
Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. Mao was bad statesman for right goals, he was excessive and did the hard things sometimes poorly, but it was important to do them none the less. The great leap forward killed millions, but ensured PRC also had the highest industrial capacity amongst developing peers after. Cultural revolution broke traditional social structures = 90%+ unified polity, speaking one language. Purging intelligentsia also overkill, but still had STEM priorities right, both nukes + first satellite developed in this era. In aggregate, disruptions setup/enabled PRC to exploit mass modernization efforts, established industrial base, and plenty of fungible bodies within a few generations instead of century+. Add oil on cramming developement atrocities to develop. Incidentally this is why pluralism of India and old practices (caste) etc is holding up development, India systemically couldn't destroy to renew, now it’s dragged down by the baggage causing 100s of millions of avoidable deaths and even more bodies with stunted development - a few decades of prolonged developing world infant mortality and food insecurity adds up. Treating human capital as actual capital is not nice, but it's effective.
Hard to say if this was actually his thinking at the time, but he's also known for declaring: "I’m not afraid of nuclear war ... China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left."