By Christopher Bodeen
The Associated Press

SHANGHAI, China - He dismissed capitalists as "running dogs," banned private property and sent millions to prison camps - or worse - for showing an interest in making money.

But now an incongruous new identity beckons for Mao Zedong: management guru.

With the 110th anniversary of his birth Friday, books, articles and seminars are mining Mao's struggles and writings for tips on how to get ahead in business, melding a national interest in his life with China's modern craze for making money.

The Communist Party is pitching in, publishing four volumes on Mao as a guerrilla problem-solver.

"Mao offers you enterprise management tips you can't get from other business studies, especially Western ones," media consultant Zhang Changlei wrote in the weekly magazine China Business. "It's something drawn from politics, philosophy and military strategy."

It's the latest proof of the durability of Mao's status as the commanding figure of modern China.

The management guides are part of an avalanche of books marking this year's anniversary.

They range from tomes on Mao's military strategy to a photo-filled book by his 67-year-old daughter, Li Min, titled My Childhood and My Father the Leader.

Concerts, postage stamps and the publication of gilt-edged collections of Mao's poetry will also commemorate the event.

Mao died in 1976 at age 82, having led China through war, man-made famines that killed tens of millions and the political violence of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which scarred a generation.

But time has mellowed Mao's image, and now, he is an object of widespread nationalistic admiration as a wily guerrilla commander and the creator of modern China.

His philosophy, a hodgepodge of cryptic aphorisms and can-do exhortations known simply as "Mao Zedong Thought," is inscribed in the constitution and is a required course for college students.

The management books attempt to square his iconoclastic communism with the hardheaded pragmatism of a China that began turning away from his radical communist vision a quarter-century ago.

The books issued by the party's Central History Publishing Office focus on managing projects, picking and motivating subordinates, dealing with crises and winning deals.

"Mao Zedong's unique approach to people helps us rethink how we deploy and nurture manpower and helps us perfect our personnel mechanisms," says the introduction to Mao Zedong Teaches us About Personnel Matters.

Much of the book stresses morality and trust in dealings with others, qualities often cited as sorely lacking in the modern Chinese business world.

"Mao remains a very charismatic figure among Chinese," said Chan Kin-man, a professor of sociology at Hong Kong's Chinese University. "The suppressing of emotions to link with competitors and even enemies at times is a highly valued quality now among Chinese in the marketplace."

As China gets more capitalist, self-help books and management guides have become common in bookstores and newsstands.