An article accusing China’s former leader of mass murder sparks a public debate.


A group of Chinese adherents to fundamental Maoism is attempting to
sue an outspoken economist for his recent essay denouncing the late
Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

Last month, Mao Yushi published an article titled “Decanonize Mao,”
exposing a laundry list of atrocities committed by the former leader
since 1949, when he founded the People’s Republic of China.

The article suggested that Mao should be held responsible for the
deaths of some 30 million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward from
1958 to 1961 and the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976.

Mao launched the Great Leap Forward in an effort to rapidly modernize
China by collectivizing the country's vast population, but the
campaign ended in economic disaster and millions of Chinese starved to
death.

Later, in an effort to maintain power, he initiated the Cultural
Revolution, plunging the country into a decade of turmoil in which
millions of workers, officials, and intellectuals were banished to the
countryside for hard labor. Many were tortured, killed, or driven to
suicide.

The article has spurred heated debate online, with some calling for
the ruling Communist Party to investigate Mao’s crimes, while others
accused the economist of slandering Mao and fabricating history. The
article was deleted soon after it was published.

Mao Yushi wrote the piece in response to the book The Fall of The Red
Sun by Xin Ziling, a former military officer at the China National
Defense University. The book thoroughly faults the former leader.

The writings of Mao Yushi and Xin Ziling attracted harsh reactions
from a group of staunch Mao Zedong supporters, who on Sunday launched
a campaign to publicly denounce and prosecute the two writers.

The group, headed by leftist former official Ma Bin and several of
Mao’s family members, published a so-called “public prosecution”
against Mao and Xin, charging them with “spreading slander against Mao
Zedong, defaming the history of the Communist Party, and inciting
political turmoil.”

Abandoned by the government

According to his wife, Mao Yushi was unavailable for comment via
telephone on Tuesday.

“He is now in a meeting and he doesn’t carry his cell phone with him,”
she told RFA.

But in an interview on Tuesday, Xin Ziling said Mao Zedong’s
supporters were targeting him and Mao Yushi because they felt
abandoned by the government.

“The Mao supporters and leftists are angry at the current Chinese
leadership, but they don’t dare to challenge it. Thus they turned
their guns on us old scholars,” he said.

“Why are they angry at the Chinese leadership after Mao? It is because
the leaders once passed a resolution to abandon Maoism. This trend can
still be seen in the Chinese media.”

Xin said the Mao supporters felt it was safer and more convenient for
them to sue two elderly writers than to take on the Chinese
government.

Sun Wenguang, a retired professor in eastern Shandong province’s Jinan
city, praised Mao Yushi’s article.

“Mao Yushi’s article tells history the way it really is and has had a
huge impact on the entire country,” he said.

“In recent years, China’s official CCTV is broadcasting more and more
‘Red Songs’ in praise of Mao Zedong. I think Mao Yushi’s article comes
out at just the right time.”

According to reports, the pro-Mao group is calling for online
signatures backing the “public prosecution” on the prominent leftist
website “Utopia” (www.wyzxsx.com), and claims to have already
collected more than 10,000 signatures.

They are urging authorities to arrest Mao Yushi and Xin and plan to
file the complaint against them with the National People’s Congress,
China’s parliament, on June 15.

Numbers unconfirmed

The Cultural Revolution has been officially labeled a "mistake” of Mao
Zedong and the so called Gang of Four, who launched the initial 1966
campaign against "capitalist roader" officials.

In the ensuing mayhem, qualified professionals like teachers and
doctors were locked up in “cow pens,” while schools and universities
were closed and health services fell into disarray under the
supervision of "revolutionaries."

While the true number of casualties remains unconfirmed to this day,
the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend quoted official statistics as
saying that 1,772 people died nationwide in the violence, which was
encouraged by then supreme leader Mao, the "Red Sun" of the era.

Recent research in the southern city of Shantou alone has shown that
100,000 people were accused as criminals, more than 4,500 were injured
or disabled, and some 400 people died.

Communist Party leaders in Beijing still permit no national memorial
to the Cultural Revolution, although officials in Guangdong's Shantou
city built a museum in 2006, honoring those who died in the southern
province.

The museum, which is privately financed and advertises only discreetly
on the Internet, sits at the top of Tashan, a mountain where many of
the Cultural Revolution dead from the nearby city of Shantou were
buried.

Reporting by Xin Yu from Hong Kong for Mandarin service. Translated by
Ping Chen. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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