Is Qin Shihuangdi really great?

Yes. He built the first modern state in Human History. When the rest of the world was governed by princes with the members of the royal family as the governor of the duchy, China under Qin Shihuang already governed countries by a civil service system, selecting governors outside the royal family. Because of Qin Shihuang, China had a civil service system two thousand years earlier than Europe.

Qin Shihuang also standardized units of weight, length, volume, and width of vehicle tracks, and most importantly, he standardized the written language. As a result, China has been a unified market for two thousand years. That's why China has been the richest and most populated civilization since Qin Shihuang because all these standardizations facilitated administration and lowered the cost of commerce.

Qin Shihuang is the greatest second to Mao.