Two often overlooked points:
1. The famine during the Great Leap Forward did not affect the whole country evenly and was much much worse in some parts than others. The vast majority of the famine deaths came from just 3 provinces: Sichuan, Henan, and Anhui. What did these 3 provinces have in common? They happen to be the 3 provinces whose leadership were filled with close followers of Deng Xiaoping. Deng's Second Field Army operated around the Dabie mountains on the border of Anhui and Henan for most of the Chinese Civil War before liberating Sichuan at the end of the civil war. Deng was in charge of running the economy during the Great Leap Forward and has on multiple occasions mentioned as one of his top accomplishments the complete repayment of the Korean War debts to the Soviet Union in the middle of the famine. Those debt payments were made using agricultural products.
2. The propaganda against Mao is not limited to the West and FLG. Much of it actually come from certain groups of high CPC cadres (and their children) who were the worst perpetrators of violence and destruction during the Cultural Revolution and they are eager to divert blame of their own actions to Mao. Mao's impetus for launching the Cultural Revolution was the fear that state power was transforming the communist party elites into a new privileged, conservative, oppressive, and exploitative ruling class (so called reactionary authorities and capitalist roaders). To prevent this, there needs to be continuous revolution and never ending class struggles, and the people must be empowered to rebel against ruling authorities (造反有理 it's righteous to rebel). The brutal attacks on intellectuals and destruction of cultural and historical relics carried out by children of some high CPC cadres and their followers at the start of the Cultural Revolution was their attempt to redirect and derail the Cultural Revolution, in what Maoist rebels would later call 打着红旗反红旗 (waving the red flag to oppose the red flag).
