For Dawa, a Zang ethnic minority and his family, the late Chairman Mao Zedong is a legend and like a god to him, and someone, who he says, is worth thanking from the bottom of his heart.

He told the Oriental Outlook magazine that his family members were jealous about his visit to Beijing to see Chairman Mao as he queued up to pay his respects to the late leader along with 20,000 tourists at the Memorial Hall for Chairman Mao Zedong in the heart of the Tian'anmen Square.

However, the world's fourth-largest economy with an annual economic growth of 10.3 per cent is witnessing changes in the way people perceive Mao, who was once painted as the savior of the most populous nation in the world.

Where before people carried Mao's red book with them as a source of inspiration, now Chinese entrepreneurs are turning to Mao's warfare tactics to earn profits.

Naobaijin, a popular tonic medicine sweeping across China, earned its profits and fame from using the ideas behind Mao's 'countryside surrounding city' and 'mass warfare' tactics in its advertising and sales campaigns, Zhou Dajiang, the author of Dang Shi Shang Jian, which turns Mao's tactics into business transactions, told the magazine.

"Entrepreneurs turning to Mao for business management ideas indicate the leader is a much more practical figure in people's minds. People have become rational and show a sense of pragmatism," Renmin University School of Politics deputy director Xiao Yanzhong noted.

Thousands of visitors queue to view the embalmed body of the late Chairman Mao Zedong at his mausoleum in Beijing September 9, 2006. Thousands queued at Beijing's Mao Zedong Mausoleum on the 30th anniversary of his death. [Reuters]

But for China, which had gone through the agony of a civil war and the Japanese invasion from 1937 to 1945, Mao's glory will never fade from the public consciousness, even though people are becoming more practical in the way they use his teachings. Mao is the leader who helped relieve the suffering of the Chinese people.

A statue in Nanjie, a small village in central China's Henan Province is imprinted with the phrase, 'Chairman Mao is not a god, but his thoughts are better than god."

An abundance of flowers lying in front of Mao's statue and a crowd of 20,000 who come to see him each day proves his prevalence in a fast-changing China thirty years after his death.

For China's elders who have experienced war and are now witnessing the fasting-growing economy and a stunningly reborn China, Mao is a savior who helped them out of an oppressive feudal system.

Jiang who missed his chance to pay respects to the late leader as the Memorial Hall was closed on the day he came, brought his son and his gratitude to Beijing.

 "I come from generations of farmers. Without the help of our chairman, we could not have changed things," Jiang says, adding that it is Mao's actions in the past that helped his son to enter a Beijing university and get a job in the capital.

Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in Shaoshan in Xiangtan County, in central China's Hunan Province and grew up to lead the country in rebuilding a war-torn China with an economy on the brink of bankruptcy.

Mao is well known to both Chinese and foreigners.

Clad in a Zhongshan uniform, representative of the Cultural Revolution period and a pair of cloth shoes, 23-year-old Xiao Cui (alias) makes a living as a ciceroni, telling overseas visitors about Mao.

"Chairman Mao was the representative of China. Foreigners want to visit him," the man says.

"Chairman Mao, good!" the 23-year-old told the Oriental Outlook in his clumsy English.