The legacy of Chairman Mao Zedong, the “Great Helmsman”, continues to inspire his supporters four decades after his death, with the unveiling of a giant gold-painted statue of China’s Communist Party founder at the cost of $4.6 million.
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The 121-foot-high homage to Mao sits on a wire chair, with his hands crossed in his lap, staring out onto agricultural fields.
Its construction was reportedly funded by several local entrepreneurs and completed in December after nine months of labour, the HMR.cn portal said on Monday. Well, Mao was responsible for China’s Great Leap Forward, causing tens of millions to die from starvation, and he also initiated the Cultural Revolution, causing widespread panic and terror across the country that destroyed millions of lives, so there is that.
Henan province is one of the poorest areas in China, and was one of the hardest hit provinces during the starvation.
A man looks at a giant golden statue of Chinese late chairman Mao Zedong. “How about utilizing the funds for poverty alleviation first?” one user of Weibo, China’s micro blogging site, wrote, in accordance with the Hong Kong Free Press web site.
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Mao was the founding father of modern-day Communist China. At the time, China’s current President Xi Jinping has praised him as a “great figure”, a patriot and a national hero. In 2013, to mark the 120th anniversary of his birth, a solid gold incarnation worth 200 million yuan (£20 million) was inaugurated in his home village of Shaoshan, with busloads of followers flocking to pay tribute.
