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Revisiting Mao Zedong after 120 years
Boxing Day will be the 120th anniversary of the controversial revolutionary's birth. BEN CHACKO assesses his legacy today
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Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
This month in Shenzhen a 50-kilo gold, jade and precious gem-studded statue of Mao Zedong was unveiled to celebrate the Chinese revolutionary's 120th birthday, which fell on December 26.
The tribute was rather ironic. Would the ferociously egalitarian Mao appreciate his likeness being cast in such material? Is Shenzhen - the first special economic zone in China, bordering the former British enclave of Hong Kong and the site where the Chinese Communist Party's controversial flirtation with market economics began - an appropriate place to honour a man who waged the bloody cultural revolution against alleged "capitalist roaders"?
Yet honour him it did, despite assessments like those of my one-time university lecturer Dr Rana Mitter, who famously imagined the ghosts of Mao and his Nationalist Party adversary Chiang Kai-shek wandering around modern China - Mao lamenting while Chiang crows in triumph.
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