What are the primary contributions of Mao Zedong?

I was told within an argument that Zhou Enlai, Deng and Liu Shaoqi did a majority of the work, and that Mao had been largely useless, specifically pointing towards the land reform/redistribution as something which didn't work and that all his plans were failures that "was saved by Enlai and Deng"

Frankly, I'm clueless about this topic, I don't know Chinese history and I couldn't really argue back and only asked questions

What are some basic facts that I should know?