Absolutely. Mao richly drew from the "revolutionary tradition" of imperial China - and he and his followers did much to rehabilitate several revolutionary figures who had, under the imperial historical tradition, been cast for centuries as rebels and traitors, instead as patriots, revolutionaries, and champions of the Proletariat.
From The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (1939):
The Chinese nation is known throughout the world not only for its industriousness and stamina, but also for its ardent love of freedom and its rich revolutionary traditions. The history of the Han people, for instance, demonstrates that the Chinese never submit to tyrannical rule but invariably use revolutionary means to overthrow or change it. In the thousands of years of Han history, there have been hundreds of peasant uprisings, great and small, against the dark rule of the landlords and the nobility. And most dynastic changes came about as a result of such peasant uprisings. All the nationalities of China have resisted foreign oppression and have invariably resorted to rebellion to shake it off. They favour a union on the basis of equality but are against the oppression of one nationality by another. During the thousands of years of recorded history, the Chinese nation has given birth to many national heroes and revolutionary leaders. Thus the Chinese nation has a glorious revolutionary tradition and a splendid historical heritage.
Mao and Maoists were able to recast many of the revolutionary leaders across times in a post facto (and many might point out ahistorical) socialist light. The peasant uprisings leading to the overthrow of the Qin, the Sui, the Tang, the Yuan, and the Qing are the most obvious examples. But there are several other rebels leaders traditional Chinese histories cast as simple villains that were rehabilitated and even championed by Mao and his followers.
One such figure was Wang Mang, for instance, the usurper who would divide the Han Dynasty into its two halves in the first century CE, had been characterized as little more than a complete ne'er do well by the likes of traditional histories...yet the 20th century philosopher Hu Shih (胡適) characterized his power grab and subsequent two decades of radical state and economic transformation - specifically his "Six Controls" and "Five Equalizations" as nothing less than "state socialism."
China's first demon Empress and its only female emperor - Lü Zhi and Wu Zetian, respectively - likewise received a Maoist makeover.... Not by the Chairman himself, but rather by his third wife Jiang Qing. She and other Marxists did their best to rehabilitate China preeminent Dragon Ladies into something resembling a true working-class struggle. Jiang was a self-styled "student extraordinaire" of Maoist thought, and in the mid-1970s actively and vigorously set about redefining both Empress' historical legacy in terms of class struggle - of Legalism against Confucianism as a direct comparison to the struggle of Marxism against patriarchal Capitalism. From Patton:
The claims made on her [Jiang’s]behalf are repetitive and incantatory: Empress Wu, for example, opposed Confucius and despised the classics. She restricted the large-scale land monopoly of great loandlords. Herself a commoner, her reign marked a triumph of the commoner-landlord over the powerful gentry class. The real point of the articles need not be concealed by the pseudo-historical prose: women can be rulers; women can advance the cause of Marxist dialectics; a woman can succeed Mao and continue the revolution.
A note: The claim that Wu was born "a commoner" is a thoroughly laughable assertion to all but the most ardent Marxists. She was born the daughter of the high gentry - and the only way one can stretch that to even remotely fit Jiang's claims is by claiming that the high gentry of the outer provinces (specifically Chengdu) are somehow "commoners".... which strains well beyond breaking any and all bounds of credulity. Regardless...
From Tung:
In the Marxist historiography of the People's Republic of China, efforts have been made to resurrect Wu’s achievements, and increasingly she comes to be respected as one who had earned her throne well. Wu’s inventions of the dianshi (court exam) and wushi (military exam), her contribution to stability at the border throught stationsing soldier-farmers at Anxi, and her willingness to heed the ministers’ advice provided her insight and competence as a ruler. However, caught in her revolt against the patriarchal order, Wu Zhao presents us with a problematic situation not without its ambivalence, for her reckless assault on her enemies and the historians’ crude portrayal of her vices had inevitably taken some toll. Because of this, feminist rereading of her historical significance is essential. It is through women’s collective reassessment of their predecessor that the blank monument’s faith in history is truly answered.
Ultimately the classical "villains" and "rebels" of imperial China were a goldmine for the Marxists and Maoists to rehabilitate to their cause... not so much because they were anything resembling a marxist ideal or socialist fighter, but because they represented the fight against the status quo, and just as importantly had preciously little verifiable documentation - making them positively easy to re-appropriate any which-way a narrative might require. Confucian tradition stipulated adherence to ancient principles, deference to authority, age, and gender... and as such anyone who could be viewed as fighting against such "Olds" could be utilized by the Maoist polemicists to further their own narrative. They would have been fools not to.
Hu, Shih (1928). “Wang Mang, the socialist emperor of nineteen centuries ago” in Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society LIX.
Mao, Zedong (1939). The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party.
Patton, Laurie L. and Wendy Doniger (1996). Myth and Method (Studies in Religion and Culture).
Tung, Jowen R. (1994). Fables for the Patriarchs: Gender Politics in Tang Discourse.
Incidentally I have a whole suite of audio shows about Lü Zhi, Empress Wu, An Lushan, and most recently Huang Chao as a part of my History of China Podcast and I encourage anyone interested to check it out.