The Olympics have taken the place of Mao Zedong on the new 10 Yuan notes. It never made sense to me that almost all Yuan notes had the face of Mao on them, considering he was responsible for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution - both tragically poor socio-economic policies.

Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand was not perfect, but he was largely responsible for China's openness to the West and the enormous increase in standard of living for the Chinese people over the past 20-30 years.  After the Olympics, Deng gets my vote for the face of the new Yuan.