See 121 Foot Tall Golden Statue Of China’s Chairman Mao, Who Is Said To Have Industrialised China But Alleged To Have Killed 45 Million People In The Process
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.
Chairman Mao ultimately did more good than harm to China. The death so exaggerated was the price the modern China day paid for its truly independent state in the world economy of today. No gains truly come without pains. Even the modern day United State was built with the toil and sweats of some people.
To blame those who honour Chairman Mao is equal to praising those who engaged in slavery and yet left those countries enslaved in shackles and dependent.
Late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, caused the death of over 3million igbos alone during the Biafra war. He took the selfish action to secede from Nigeria, out of jealousy of Yakubu Gowon, he disobey the Late Nnamdi Azikwe , the great Zik of Africa’s advice to seek a peaceful way to resolve the issue of secession, his act cause great famine in the land, he imprisoned Jaja Wachukwu, the first Ambassador of foreign affairs and commonwealth relation of Nigeria, also the first ambassador of Nigeria to UN, an igbo man for treason, because he has the guts to tell him to stop using children in the military.
Azikiwe had to fled biafra, for the fear of been imprisoned by Ojukwu, cos he was totally against the war. He was a dictator who killed anyone suspected of treason, he killed his own people at will, he killed those people in biafra who tried to resolve the war for the sake of innocent Biafran citizens, even with no evidence of treason, he killed them anyhow. He was completely power drunk.
One of the brothers in my old neighborhood in Ibadan, his father fought in the Biafra war, the man said the famine was so much, he ate his own faeces, he said he ate raw leaves, just to have something in his stomach, he said that’s why there is so much leaf in igbos food. He said the Biafra army fears Ojukwu, when some of them fled battle, they go to their village and hide, because if you go back to the base, instead of treating your injury, they send you back to war zone. Ojukwu never cared about them, it’s all about his selfish ambition.
The special relief aid sent to biafra to ease their pain noted Ojukwu was more concerned about weapons than the health and safety of the igbos. They claimed the victim card he played during the Biafra war was all charade.
Late Chinua Achebe’s brother in law almost fell prey of Ojukwu, he was charged to court for treason, because the young man only said “why don’t we stop this war”. The in law was saved only because Achebe was a member of Ojukwu’s cabinet.
Note that Chinua Achebe claimed historians deemed the Biafran war a genocide, an act to wipe out the igbo’s from the face of earth like Nazi, an act that was made possible because people like him failed to advise Ojukwu to seized fire for the sake of innocent citizens. They all nurtured Ojukwu’s ego, because they are all egotistical.
This same intellectual, Achebe who witnessed how one of Ojukwu’s general, Azuria, killed young soldiers to put others in line, was so proud of those accomplishments by Ojukwu, he applaud his act of using young teenagers with no military experience and also female in war, he saw the system used by Ojukwu to get these immature teenagers (like Nysc) as brilliant, but blamed the death toll on Nigeria army, in fact he called the cowardice of Ojukwu, after he ran to ivory Coast, an act of denying Gowon closure. He literally worshiped Ojukwu, so is a lot of igbo’s, you need to see the way they celebrated him when he returned from exile, he was ordained the great Ikemba, even in death those people see his selfish act as heroic.
So MojiSola mi amor, people don’t always see things the way we do, it’s all psychology.
Celebrating him is not bad, since he made China what it is today…the fact that so many people’s lives were involved, for me is too much of a sacrifice.
that’s wrong to do such thing.still.no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!