China Just Toppled This 120-Foot Golden Statue of Chairman Mao

“Why not use the 3 million [yuan] to improve local education?” another Sina Weibo user wrote, according to the Guardian report, which said that other emblems of Mao worship had cropped up in rural China, citing state media.

Mao, who ruled China with an iron grip for almost three decades, died on September 9, 1976 at the age of 82.

On Friday, a picture circulated on Weibo showed Mao’s statue with its hands, legs and feet appeared to have been hacked off, a black cloth draped over the head.

A 121-foot-high statue of Mao Zedong mysteriously cropped up in a remote field in China’s central Henan province, as we reported this week.

An official from the township government told a reporter from People’s Daily Online that the construction of the statue didn’t go through examination and approval procedures demanded by the government, although it was built on a barren land.

Unlike other statues dedicated to Mao, it was not financed by the government but by nostalgic local businessmen.

The millions of deaths were in large part a result of Mao attempting to jump start state-led industrial production which in turn devastated the agricultural sector.

The leaders of the CPC in the last three decades including the present President Xi Jinping are the supporters of Deng’s reform and opening up policy while revering Mao as founder of the party and modern China.

The construction had been funded by local entrepreneurs and farmers.

Observers have criticised the statue, pointing out that it had been positioned in the centre of the region worst hit by starvation in the late 1950s.

He was also responsible for the Cultural Revolution, a period of ideological fundamentalism which saw hundreds of thousands oppressed by Red Guard zealots.