Prominent Chinese Economist Website Shutdown; Critic of Mao

China’s ruling Communist party has closed the website of a prestigious economist as it launches a campaign against “nihilist” interpretations of former leader Mao Zedong that is stirring up ghosts of the Cultural Revolution, reports The Financial Times.

On Friday, censors closed down the social media accounts and website of a think-tank founded by 88-year-old economist Mao Yushi, a frequent target of neo-Maoists among others.  A former visiting scholar at Harvard, his think-tank, the Unirule Institute of Economics, has received funding from the Ford Foundation, often a front for CIA disruptive activities.

According to FT, Chairman Mao is revered by the ruling Communist party for fighting Japanese invaders during the second world war and for winning the Chinese civil war...The Communist party fears that reassessments of Mao’s legacy threaten its legitimacy while reformers use the failures of Mao’s rule to argue for more pluralist government. After his death the party decided that Mao was “70 per cent right, 30 per cent wrong” but has more recently grown increasingly intolerant of any criticism of him.

Earlier this month, a lecturer at an agricultural college in coastal Shandong Province and a local government official in Hebei Province near Beijing were sacked for publicly criticising Mao. Neo-Maoists travelled from around the country to protest at the Shandong university’s gate, ultimately brawling with supporters of the lecturer, Deng Xiangqiao, according to FT.

 -RW