China's Changsha City presents Tibet with Mao statue

A Chinese city has presented Tibet with a giant statue of Mao Zedong (毛澤東), the man who oversaw the occupation of the Himalayan region half a century ago, state media said yesterday.

Changsha, a large industrial center in central China, decided to donate the 35-tonne statue to Gonggar County near Lhasa as part of a program to "help Tibet," the Beijing News reported.

The statue, which the paper claimed was the largest of Mao anywhere in China, measures 7.1m, or 12.3m if the base is included.

It is now on the way to Tibet, and will be placed on a square in Gonggar County, which Changsha has also helped finance at a cost of 6.5 million yuan (US$810,000), the paper said.

Tibet has been ruled by China since its troops invaded in 1950, a year after Mao assumed power in Beijing.

The region's spiritual head, the Dalai Lama, fled into exile in India in 1959 and direct ties between him and Beijing collapsed in 1993.