Talking with Chinese expats in America, one that really sticks out for me is:
Despite massive economic backslide under Mao, China would not have industrialized without him. I've heard people who are otherwise very critical of Mao say this, seems ubiquitous. The American perspective of course is that Mao was only a negative and stunted Chinese growth. I think the idea is that land owners were overly conservative with capital investment and Taiwanese/Hong Kong growth is explained by foreign investment that Republican China would not have received.
And not as ubiquitous but several have said that the Japanese military is a major threat to China, which seems absurd. Haven't gotten a real justification for this other than "they make good technology", like they're secretly developing a Gundam.
Interestingly, the people I've spoken to here are perfectly happy to criticize the Cultural Revolution. My impression is that saying anything negative about Mao in his later life would be fine, so long as you couched your denunciation in a way that didn't implicate the contemporary CCP.
I suspect that an impassioned defense of the Red Guard would get more blow back here than in the USA, actually, based on my friends' opinions.
