A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China’s founding father Mao Zedong has been erected in open countryside by a group of capitalists at a cost of 3 million yuan ($460,000), reports said.
With a head as large as a two-storey house, this gigantic golden Chairman Mao Zedong sculpture sits proudly in Tongxu county, central China’s Henan Province.
The enormous figure has reportedly taken nine months to build, and is almost completed.
The statue as however raised a lot of controversy as over time Mao has been dubbed the greatest mass murderer in history.
It all started in 1957 when Chairman Mao, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, launched the country’s ‘Great Leap Forward.’
The programme, which aimed to rapidly transform China’s economy from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, led to a widespread famine whose death toll is estimated at between 18 and 45 million. Putting the number in perspective 45million is the current population of Spain.
In 2010, a Hong-Kong based historian was given unprecedented access to the official Communist Party archives and concluded that Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, qualified as the greatest mass murderer in world history.
Nearly 40 years after the death of the man dubbed the ‘Great Helsman’, villagers and business people in the rural Chinese county of Tongxu, near Kaifeng in Henan province, have now decide to honour him with this enormous effigy.
What is strange is that Henan province, one of China’s poorest regions, was one of the areas worst hit by the famine that came as a result of Mao’s relentless industrialisation, the ‘Great Leap Forward’.
Nevertheless, Mao is still a celebrated figure in many parts of China. His portrait is found over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and his face appears on banknotes.
‘In contemporary China, Mao Zedong represents the embodiment of fairness and justice,’ said Liu Jianwu, the dean of China’s Mao Zedong research centre.“In the hearts of ordinary people, Mao represents fairness and justice. So people hold these kinds of emotions towards him.” Jianwu added.
On the Chinese version of Twitter Weibo plenty were left unimpressed by the mega-Mao.
‘How about using the money for poverty alleviation first?’ the Hong Kong Free Press reports one user as saying.
Supporters credit him with building China into a world power.
Education and health care in the country improved, life expectancy increased, helping the population rise from 550m to more than 900m by the time he died in 1976, aged 82.
The status of women also improved supporters argue, and toward the end of his time in power he began a policy of opening China, signalled by US President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972, according to Mirror.
Current Chinese leader Xi Jinping said he undertook to “hold high the banner of Mao Zedong Thought forever”, calling Mao “a great figure who changed the face of the nation and led the Chinese people to a new destiny.”
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Despite his great achievements, do you think a man alleged to have killed at least 18 million people deserves to still be recognised like this? Do leave your comments.