Mao Nostalgia Grows in China as Inequality and Economic Woes Return to Focus

The crimson flags at Nanjie village’s “East is Red” Square hang motionless in the summer heat as tourists take photographs beside a towering statue of Mao Zedong. Nearly five decades after his death, the former Chinese leader remains a visible presence in this central Henan community, often described as China’s last Maoist village.

Nostalgia for Mao’s promise of equality is growing as memories of his turbulent rule fade and China grapples with a slowing economy and widening inequality. Mao led the 1949 communist revolution and established collectivized ownership, arguing that it would industrialize the country and unite it. Historians also blame his radical policies for mass starvation and millions of deaths.

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I still revere him very much.

The Chinese Communist Party still presents Mao as a revolutionary hero. But after his death, it acknowledged that the Cultural Revolution, which he launched in 1966, had been a “grave mistake”. That judgment has been maintained by later leaders. In Nanjie, however, murals of Mao cover the village, residents continue to live under shared-ownership principles, and local enterprises help provide free housing.

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People were purer.

“I still revere him very much,” said Xie Kaiyue, a 22-year-old local university student. She said young people in the village, including herself, were less driven than earlier generations and that “people were purer”. Electric carts carry visitors past uniform apartment blocks covered in socialist slogans while guides explain how the cooperative system supports residents.

In Dazhai, a mountain village in Shanxi province once promoted by Mao as a national model, tourists recall a period when he dominated China’s political and social life. “People didn’t have enough to eat or to wear,” said Li, a 64-year-old visitor from Xi’an. “But the whole country was full of vigor, and there was a spirit of struggling with heaven, earth, and people to change every aspect of China. Of course I miss it.” Shops now sell Mao posters, playing cards, crockery and copies of the “Little Red Book”. Yet the darker record of his rule remains largely censored in public discourse, including the persecution of intellectuals, the closure of schools, collectivization of land and property, and the famine that followed.

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People didn’t have enough to eat or to wear, but the whole country was full of vigor, and there was a spirit of struggling with heaven, earth, and people to change every aspect of China. Of course I miss it.