Call to Remove Mao Zedong’s Tiananmen Portrait

For more than six decades, this portrait of Mao Zedong has overlooked Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Now a group of veteran Communist Party members are calling for it to be removed. They believe Mao’s rule did more harm than good, and want his portrait to be replaced by one of Sun Yat-sen’s—the man who founded Asia’s first republic.

The seven communist cadres from Yunnan Province issued an online letter on Saturday, October 15. They echoed earlier calls from six elders in Hubei Province to remove the portrait. The veterans say they experienced firsthand the disastrous policies Mao implemented during his rule, from 1949 to 1976.

The letter lists Mao’s policies, including denouncing more than three million intellectuals as right-wing extremists. Many were tortured to death in jail. Mao also initiated the “Great Leap Forward” campaign—widely believed to have resulted in a great famine that starved to death over 30-million people. Mao’s Cultural Revolution is notorious for having killed more than 20 million people, and destroying China’s cultural legacy.

[Li Deqiang, Signatory of Open Letter]:
“Mao Zedong is someone with a bad character. During his leadership in China, more than 60-million people died. To hang a portrait of someone like this is a humiliation to Chinese people. Mao has not earned this place.”

The communist veterans say someone deserving of a space in Tiananmen Square is Sun Yat-sen. He currently has a temporary spot in Tiananmen Square as part of the Chinese regime's celebration of its National Day.

Both Taiwanese and mainland Chinese regard Sun as the “Father of the Nation.” He played an instrumental role in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, overturning two thousand years of imperial rule. Sun co-founded the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, and supported the ideas like democracy and welfare for the people. He established Asia’s first republic—The Republic of China, now the government of Taiwan.

The Chinese regime—officially named the People’s Republic of China—has dismissed Sun’s legacy of a democratic republic. Instead the regime pays homage to Sun as a “revolutionary pioneer,” using him as model for its own rise to communist power through violent revolutions.