Concerts planned in Australia to honor Mao Zedong (毛澤東) on the 40th anniversary of his death were canceled amid warnings they could spark disturbances, illustrating a generational divide in the Chinese community over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) icon’s legacy.
Despite Chinese government recriminations over the brutal decade of mayhem he unleashed, Mao’s appeal has not diminished among loyalists both at home and among migrant communities.
Authorities in Australia’s two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, axed the “Glory and Dreams” concerts that were to be held on Tuesday in the face of criticism they would have praised “the worst mass murderer in human history.”
The City of Sydney said the event planned at the grand Town Hall to honor the anniversary raised the “potential for civil disturbance, patron-to-patron conflict and staff-to-patron conflict.”
It said the organizers themselves identified the event, billed as a cultural concert, as being at “high risk of disruption.”
Australia is home to about 866,000 ethnic Chinese among a population of 24 million — with half born in China. High emotion over the Mao commemorations exposes a schism largely between older emigres who witnessed the catastrophic Cultural Revolution and the bloody Tiananmen crackdown, and more recent arrivals who know a richer, more confident and modern China.
Flyers for the concerts described Mao as “a national leader forever in the hearts of Chinese people and a hero in the eyes of people all over the world,” according to Feng Chongyi (馮崇義) from the University of Technology in Sydney.
For those who blame him for the deaths of tens of millions of people in famine and purges in the decade from 1966, this was “too much,” the associate professor in China studies wrote in a commentary.
To many Australians “Mao or Maoism is a symbol of violence, dictatorship, intolerance, political persecution and cultural repression,” he added.
Leading the backlash has been the Embracing Australian Values Alliance group, which launched an online petition that attracted thousands of signatures.
The concerts had “triggered the trauma of many Chinese victims of Mao’s revolution” and went against Australian values, it said.
John Hugh, one of those behind the petition, said Mao’s legacy remained painful for many Chinese.
“He is not gone yet,” he said of Mao, who still commands a powerful personality cult in some quarters. “These kind of concerts just refreshed their wounds.”
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