DEIFIED MAO

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31725, 8 July 1968, Page 11

DEIFIED MAO

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) HONG. KONG, July 7. Millions of pictures showing a deified Mao Tse-tung have gone on sale in Hong Kong in what experts term an attempt to credit him with a 1922 Labour victory actually led by Liu Shao-chi, now Mao's bitterest power-struggle enemy, the Associated Press reports.

The pictures show Mao, dressed in traditional flowing robes, standing atop Anyuan mountain.

Communist newspapers said the oil painting originals commemorated Mao's great accomplishments at Anyuan, where Communist history came to one of its “greatest turning points” and the workers movement finally began “going the right way." The obvious reference is to the general coalminers' strike at Anyuan in 1922, which many Communists hail as their first great labour strike success.

But according to dozens of reference books here, that strike was led by then 24-year-old Liu Shao-chi, now President of China and the man whom Mao and his followers have been trying for two years to bring down in disgrace. A few of the reference books say Mao made a brief inspection trip to Anyuan that year but none seen here gives Mao any credit for organising nor leading the strike.