China built a big golden statue of Chairman Mao

Who was he?

Commonly referred to as Chairman Mao, he was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and the founding father of the People's Republic of China.

Why was he controversial?

He led a rigid regime which plunged his country into chaos. Starvation and death were commonplace, with up to 60 million lives thought to have been claimed under his leadership.

Residents of one of China’s poorest regions have built a giant golden statue of Chairman Mao, nearly 40 years after the Communist revolutionary’s death.

Maoism may be seeing a renaissance in China
 

The 36-metre statue, near the village of Zhushigang in Tongxu county, Henan province, was built from steel and concrete, with a coating of gold paint.

Local news outlets showed multiple pictures of people taking selfies and conventional photographs with the enormous incarnation of China’s “Great Helmsman”, which cost a reported 3 million yuan (£310,000) to build.

Local entrepeneurs and villagers reportedly paid for the construction
 

Work on the new statue started last March and was completed in mid-December, according to Sina, a Chinese news site. It said that the construction was funded by entrepreneurs, along with donations from local residents.

 

Chinese men took selfies in front of the statue

Mao Zedong’s mid-century development policies, including his “Great Leap Forward”, are widely held as the cause of millions of deaths as failed agricultural reform led to widespread famine. Henan province was badly hit by the crisis, and is still one China’s most impoverished areas.

But revivalism in modern China means Mao Zedong is often revered, and he is already commemorated with thousands of statues across the country and a portrait over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. 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. 

Source: Telegraph