I think way too many people are dismissing Mao's economic achievement, especially his work in infrastructures and education. To understand China's economic success in Deng's time, you have to first understand what did Mao leave Deng with.
There are several fundamental requirements for a nation to build a solid economy:
1. Food Security: Industry comes from the surplus population that is freed from agricultural obligation. This means the nation must be able to adequately feed its citizens before serious industry activities can take place. From later half of the 19th century until the finding of PRC in 1949, there is constant famine in China. In fact, famines from 1912 (the fall of Qing dynasty) to 1949 (finding of PRC) are not very heavily reported because it is a constants rather than unique event. So how big was the famine before finding of PRC, well, the AVERAGE death rate from 1912 to 1949 is significantly higher than 1959, the worst and only famine in PRC history. It is no wonder why China could not build a modern industry in those times. Now, when talking about Mao's era, people often talk about the famine from 1959 to 1961. This is a good example that industrialization is interrupted due to food scarcity. The link below shows food production in China from 1950 to 2008:
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The fact is, the only famine in PRC history happened in Mao's era and it is in Mao's era China achieved food security.
2. Well educated work force: Population is a double edged sword. Handled properly, it will be force that make you rise to greatness, but handled badly, it will be the downfall of your nation. For a nation to prosper, the population must productive. This means two things: social stability and work productivity. The former mainly concerns with issues like crime, terrorist, racial/religious conflict, etc. While Mao did do quite a bit work in these categories, the foundations were already there in Chinese culture thousands of years before hand, so we won't go into those. Now, the work productivity depends on three things, work ethics, total number of workers available and level of education. Chinese are pretty much workaholics throughout the history. Though to be fair, in this aspect Deng does have a better idea to motivate people than Mao. The other two, however, are mainly Mao's work. To increase the labor force available, Mao heavily promoted gender equality. In fact, throughout PRC history, China has one of the highest employment rate for women in the world. The second is education. In 1949, 80% of the total Chinese population and 95% of the peasants population are illiterate. (Illiteracy by Chinese standard is recognizing less than 1500 characters, which is the number of words required to read newspapers, simple books and write simple reports) By 1982, where Deng's reform started, the illiteracy rate has dropped to 34.49%.
3. Infrastructure to support modern industries: electricity, transportation, machinery, metal production, fuel.
Chinese power production by year can be seen here:
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Chinese total road and railroad length by year:
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Chinese petroleum production by year (In comparison with US, USSR/Russia):
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Make no mistake, Deng is very good at what he did and Chinese economy truly took off under his leadership, but every tool he needed to achieve that goal was built by Mao.
The Chinese methods of economic success is studied and imitated by quite a few nations in the world, but you can't not simply call it Deng's success, because without Mao's work and achievements, Deng's work cannot happen. Quite a few countries try to skip Mao's stage (because it is bloody difficult) and jump straight to Deng's stage. They crashed and burned for their effort, because without you can't build the house without laying the foundation first.
