China halts Mao personality cult

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 9

China halts Mao personality cult

NZPA Peking The Chinese Communist Party central committee has virtually declared the end of personally cults in r”.ina, including that surrounding J the late Chairman Mao Tse*U The official Xinhua news agency ■ reported that the central committee had issued a sweeping directive which bans the construction of new memorial halls named for Mao and other leaders. ■ It calls for a strict limit on portraits of Mao and inscriptions of his sayings in public places. The directive .also limits the publishing of biographies and writings of individual leaders and reporting on their activities and speeches. Elaborate funeral services for high-ranking " officials also are to be limited. The central committee said the following principle should be followed: “To sing more praises of the workers, peasants and soldiers . .. . while giving less publicity to individuals.” Criticism of the late Chairman Mao has been increasing as China’s present leaders belittle his tumultuous political legacy. Two weeks ago, workers removed four huge portraits of Mao from the Great Hall of the People in Tien An Men Square and removed his towering slogans from the facades of public buildings. In an interview published yesterday, Chairman Hua Guofeng, Mao’s chosen successor, said Mao “was not a god and was fallible.” Furthermore, Mr Hua said, Mao made grave errors and must bear responsibility for the Cultural Revolution.

“There ha.’e been too many portraits, quotations and poems of Chairman Mao in public places,” the directive said. “This is lacking in political dignity. The number should be gradually reduced to. an. appropriate amount. The same’ principle applies to portraits and inscriptions of other leaders.”

The directive also says “inappropriate commemoration not only causes waste, and alienation of leaders and masses, but fosters the incorrect view that history is created by individuals.” The central committee ordered that without its permission, no halls, pavilions, or monuments are to be constructed in memory of individual veteran revolutionaries.

Existing memorials or those under construction are to be converted to social, economic, cultural, and welfare institutions, the directive said. The central committee said “some commemorative establishments” will be permitted for Mao, the late Premier Chou En-lai, the late Chief of State Liu Shaoqi and Marshal Chu De and others. “But the number should be strictly limited and measures taken to have no more built,” it said.

The fate of the Mao memorial in Tien An Men Square was not immediately known. Mao’s remains are on view there and several times' a week hundreds of people are assigned tickets and obediently pass through. Speculation has been circulating for months that eventually the mausoleum would not be devoted to one

man, Mao, but would be converted to other uses. The central committee also . criticised the practice of holding grand memorial meetings to rehabilitate those who died under persecution during the Cultural Revolution.

In eulogising veteran revolutionaries, it said, too much prominence has been given to their roles as individuals and the approach has not been realistic.

Except for special cases authorised by the central committee, funeral services for high-ranking cadres or leaders should be simple and economical, the directive said.

In general, it said, funeral ceremonies could be omitted and memorial services should be smaller, with fewer people attending and limited presentation of wreaths.

China’s present leadership appears determined to create a collective leadership — not one in which power is concentrated in the hands of one man. Last month, the “People’s Daily” newspaper criticised a tendency to build memorials around China for Chou En-lai and Liu Shaoqi. “It is absolutely necessary to stop this tendency from growing to a larger extent,” the newspaper said in a commentary. Old revolutionaries left their footprints everywhere, it said, adding: “How terrible it would be if we build memorial halls in all the places where they had been.”

Ancient China was dotted with temples, it said: “but we absolutely cannot build memorial hails all over the country today.”