Chairman Mao

That the current ruler of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao, is a bore will no doubt be a relief to most people, including 1.3 billion Chinese. Hu's dullness is remarkable given the high drama of China's fairly recent transformation from a poor, blood-soaked totalitarian country to a rich (in patches) superpower aspiring to take over America's lead in the not-so-distant future. But perhaps his lack of charisma is part of the point. The first 27 years of the People's Republic, under Chairman Mao, when millions died in almost constant purges and upheavals, and tens of millions died of starvation in bizarre economic experiments, were so awful that most Chinese are quite sick of charismatic leadership.

Mao Tse-tung, Confucius and Louis Vuitton have been mixing it up lately on China's most-renowned stage: Tiananmen Square. For decades, Mao's portrait has hung over the Tiananmen Gate at the far north of the square, at the entrance to the Forbidden City, even as his embalmed body has lain in the mausoleum built immediately after his death in the center of the square. Chairman Mao, the Great Helmsman, founder of the People's Republic of China, looms mightily over the square, reminding the Chinese people of the Communist Party's achievement in raising the country out of its "feudal" and impoverished past and restoring it to prosperity and global influence.

China, worried by predictions of a record baby boom, is renewing its foundering one-child-per-family campaign. "Now we are facing the biggest boom ever in the numbers of women of child-bearing age," said Shen Guoxiang, director of publicity at the State Family Planning Commission. He said a national meeting on birth control in February had decreed that education and propaganda be intensified to encourage the one-child family.

You can't help but wonder whether Mao Tse-tung would be rolling over in his mausoleum if he could hear the ka-ching! of cash registers ringing up the amazing array of tchotchkes, from snow globes to glow-in-the-dark figurines, sold with his likeness. Or if the founder of Communist China, who fretted about "the serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants," could hear this blithe assertion by a visitor here: "I think that what Chairman Mao really intended was for Chinese people to get rich."

Mao Tse-tung's only grandson has become the youngest general in the People's Liberation Army at age 39, a Chinese newspaper said. Military historian Mao Xinyu is the son of Mao's second son, Mao Anqing, who died in 2007. The younger Mao is a member of the main advisory body to the country's rubber-stamp parliament and is a fierce defender of his grandfather's legacy. Known around the world as Chairman Mao, Mao Tse-tung led the bloody two-decade-long revolution that overthrew Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and established the People's Republic of China in 1949.

I was entertained by the sight of Chairman Mao and Colonel Sanders side by side ("MAO, Meet KFC," by Ed Leibowitz, So SoCal, July 26), but don't you realize that the Asian Communist leader who really belongs with the colonel is Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh? If you put photos of those two next to each other, I doubt that anyone would be able to tell who's who. Blair Walker Lake Forest

On Western Avenue, amid a jumble of triangles and parallelograms devoid of any corrupting influence of Greco-Roman, Georgian or Rococo architecture, Col. Harland Sanders' head rears up as colossal and triumphant as Chairman Mao Tse-tung's on any Cultural Revolution display. Upon closer inspection, there are other odd similarities between the two global personalities: Like Chairman Mao, Col. Sanders would award himself that quasi-military title that confers power.

Performance artist and painter May Sun has relatives high in the Chinese government. That did not stop her parents from taking their children and their "vacation" visas and fleeing to Hong Kong when the artist was 2. "We came to the U.S. from Hong Kong when I was 16," she says. "I matured in both cultures, and I can finally say I'm equally comfortable in both." Sun first returned to China in 1985. "It was a wonderful, uplifting experience. In small, serene towns willows covered the landscape.

Re "Dissing Dissent," Opinion, Oct. 26: If Chinese expatriate and Berkeley resident Liu Baifang is honestly concerned with the health of this country's freedoms, she might well consider these questions: How many times did Chairman Mao face a legitimate election or referendum? What mainstream Chinese periodical, then or now, would publish an opinion piece similar to "Dissing Dissent"? Stuart Weiss Beverly Hills Baifang's opinion piece is a powerful indictment of the Bush administration's march toward secrecy in government, the likes of which we have never seen before.

Although Chairman Mao Tse-tung is less revered than in his lifetime, about 30,000 people a day are drawn to his tomb 11 years after his death. They shuffle along quickly in a line for a brief glimpse of his embalmed body under a red flag in a crystal sarcophagus. The mausoleum of the "Great Helmsman" who brought a Communist government to power in 1949 is the No. 1 tourist attraction in Beijing and the majority who come are from outside the capital.

That the current ruler of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao, is a bore will no doubt be a relief to most people, including 1.3 billion Chinese. Hu's dullness is remarkable given the high drama of China's fairly recent transformation from a poor, blood-soaked totalitarian country to a rich (in patches) superpower aspiring to take over America's lead in the not-so-distant future. But perhaps his lack of charisma is part of the point. The first 27 years of the People's Republic, under Chairman Mao, when millions died in almost constant purges and upheavals, and tens of millions died of starvation in bizarre economic experiments, were so awful that most Chinese are quite sick of charismatic leadership.

Mao Tse-tung's only grandson has become the youngest general in the People's Liberation Army at age 39, a Chinese newspaper said. Military historian Mao Xinyu is the son of Mao's second son, Mao Anqing, who died in 2007. The younger Mao is a member of the main advisory body to the country's rubber-stamp parliament and is a fierce defender of his grandfather's legacy. Known around the world as Chairman Mao, Mao Tse-tung led the bloody two-decade-long revolution that overthrew Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and established the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Hua Guofeng, one of the last of the early generation of Communist revolutionaries who was named briefly to succeed Chairman Mao Tse-tung, died Wednesday, Chinese state media reported. Hua, who is credited with putting China on the path to reform by removing the Gang of Four, was 87. Sometimes dismissed as insignificant, Hua was a man caught between two eras who created a bridge over the gap before having the good sense to exit the political stage gracefully. In the past, the Communist Party has waited several days to announce the death of a major current or former leader, giving political factions time to fight for position and the party time to control the damage.

Re "Human rights take field in China," Aug. 6 In my travels in China as long as 13 years ago -- when the air was nowhere near as dirty as it is now -- I saw Chinese citizens all over Beijing wearing surgical masks to protect themselves from the polluted air. Our cyclists were doing the same, and have nothing to apologize for. The Chinese should look in the mirror before claiming to have been deeply offended. Mark W. Dixon Newport Beach Before we use the Olympics as a tool to brazenly criticize life in China, why don't we first tend our own garden?

Shaoshan, China Like visitors at George Washington's estate in Mount Vernon, Va., people come to Shaoshan village deep in the heart of China to remember and teach their children about their national hero. He launched the Long March, an estimated 3,750-mile epic exploit as central to the story of China as the Boston Tea Party is to America. He fought warlords, the Japanese and the U.S.-supported Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek. On Oct. 1, 1949, he stood in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and proclaimed the birth of a new China.

FORTY YEARS AGO, on May 16, 1966, Chairman Mao Tse-tung unleashed the Cultural Revolution on China. At the time, I was a 25-year-old photographer living in Harbin, the capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. Only a few months earlier I had returned from the countryside, where I had been sent for a year and a half during the Socialist Education Movement to share the hardship of the peasants and to spread revolutionary fervor.

Ten years ago this week, on Sept. 9, 1976, Mao Tse-tung died. In this century, no individual has stood so much at the center of so many lives. There was not one but several Maos--soldier, revolutionary, poet. To some he appears a kind of patron saint, a man who led China out of war and famine and feudalism; others--victims of the Cultural Revolution--remember that the same man who led them to salvation later led them to the brink of self-destruction.

Plans by the British Broadcasting Corp. to televise a documentary depicting the late Chinese ruler, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, as a sex-obsessed tyrant have drawn severe objections by the government of China, but the BBC pledged Saturday not to pull the broadcast. The Chinese said that the British government should be "fully aware of the consequences" if the documentary, "Chairman Mao--The Last Emperor," airs as scheduled on Monday night's "Timewatch" public affairs program.

Despite the Communist Party's efforts to celebrate today's 110th anniversary of Mao Tse-tung's birth with reverence and awe, for many here in his hometown, it's more about cashing in. Restaurants bearing Mao's name compete aggressively to serve visitors the sauteed fatty pork dish he loved. Mao lighters, snow domes and figurines fly off the shelves of souvenir stands.

Re "Dissing Dissent," Opinion, Oct. 26: If Chinese expatriate and Berkeley resident Liu Baifang is honestly concerned with the health of this country's freedoms, she might well consider these questions: How many times did Chairman Mao face a legitimate election or referendum? What mainstream Chinese periodical, then or now, would publish an opinion piece similar to "Dissing Dissent"? Stuart Weiss Beverly Hills Baifang's opinion piece is a powerful indictment of the Bush administration's march toward secrecy in government, the likes of which we have never seen before.