Mick Hartley

This is weird. Maoist demonstrations in Shaoshan, China.

On the eve of former Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong's birthday (December 25), large crowds of his admirers, many young, converged at the Mao Zedong Statue Square in Shaoshan to mark the occasion. Celebratory demonstrations filled the air as they hoisted red flags, brandished portraits of Mao, unfurled banners wishing "Happy Birthday to Grandpa Mao," and chanted slogans like "Long live Chairman Mao," "We want the true Mao Zedong Thought," and "Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat." The footage in this clip was posted to various X (formerly Twitter) accounts on December 25 and 26, 2023.

The chants of "down with bureaucratic capitalism", and "not private ownership under the banner of Marxism-Leninism", are presumably directed at the current regime of Xi Linping. Strange that they'd choose this form of protest: as though the only alternative they see to Xi's authoritarianism is a return to the days of Chairman Mao, and the horrors of the Great Leap Forward (est. 40 million dead), or the Cultural Revolution. But then they don't learn about that. In China that's hidden history, and all that's left is some kind of vision of a past golden age, along with its mindless slogans.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes."