Young and old pay tribute to Mao in his hometown 50 years after his death

Shortly after midnight, Shaoshan’s main square remained crowded with thousands of people marking 50 years since Mao Zedong’s death. Many were young. They waved Chinese, Communist Party and Jiangxi Soviet flags beneath a statue of Mao while singing “The Internationale,” China’s national anthem and “The East Is Red.”

Groups recited poems written by Mao, and the crowd shouted slogans including “Long live the people,” “Long live Chairman Mao” and “Down with capitalism.” The gathering showed that Mao’s cult still has a visible following, even as debate over his historical legacy remains deeply charged.

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Increasing pressure

A 30-year-old visitor from Guangdong told EFE that many young Chinese people face “increasing pressure” and unemployment. Some, he said, were beginning to believe that the ideas of China’s revolutionaries had not been wrong. He acknowledged the country’s “increase in material wealth,” but criticized the rising cost of living and argued that “a planned economy is completely feasible.”

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A planned economy is completely feasible.

“When Mao died, U.S. President Richard Nixon had begun moving closer to China, we had the atomic bomb and had put satellites into orbit. Perhaps it was not such a disastrous country as some people say,” he said. He added that many young visitors had traveled alone and used the gathering to meet others with similar views.

The square therefore served both as a memorial and as a meeting place for a generation that never experienced Mao’s rule. That revival of interest coexisted with the record of the Great Leap Forward, which scholars associate with a famine that killed tens of millions, and the Cultural Revolution, a decade of violence and chaos later described by the Communist Party as a “serious calamity.” Another visitor from Hubei, who personally remembered Mao’s death in 1976, said an uncle had brought the news to his family when he was 13.

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When Mao died, U.S. President Richard Nixon had begun moving closer to China, we had the atomic bomb and had put satellites into orbit. Perhaps it was not such a disastrous country as some people say.