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Xi Extols China’s ‘Red’ Heritage in a Land Haunted by Famine Under MaoImageA farmer in Gaodadian Village in the Xinyang region of Henan Province. 60 years ago, over half of the villagers in Gaodadian starved to death as a result of Mao’s Great Leap forward.CreditCreditGilles Sabrié for The New York Times
By Chris Buckley
Sept. 30, 2019
XINYANG, China — Harrowing memories of China’s revolutionary past hang over the rolling wheat fields and scattered villages where the Communist Party’s leader, Xi Jinping, recently visited to commemorate 70 years since Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic.
Yet not all who died here in the Xinyang region during Mao’s tumultuous era were honored during Mr. Xi’s political pilgrimage.
Mr. Xi bowed in tribute at a memorial for 130,000 fighters from this area in central China who gave their lives for the Communist cause. But the estimated one million peasants who starved to death in Xinyang, after Mao’s Great Leap Forward spawned the biggest famine in modern times, went unnoted in official reports about the visit.
Who was remembered, or overlooked, put in sharp relief Mr. Xi’s authoritarian recasting of Chinese history.
Amber Wang contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Xi Lauds ‘Red’ Heritage in Land Brutalized by It. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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