A massive gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father, Mao Zedong has been set up in Tongxu county in the central province of Henan. Standing at 121 feet, the statue pays homage to the chairman, depicting him sitting on a wire chair with his hands crossed in his lap staring out onto the agricultural fields before him in thoughtful repose, according to AFP.
Local villagers report that the statue was funded by a group of capitalists, along with some contributions from villagers, costing a total of about $460,000, according to The People's Daily China.
Chairman Mao Zedong ruled over China until his death in 1976. Tens of millions of people died under his rule in what has been described as "economic mismanagement and political terror," reported NPR. Despite that however, Mao is still widely revered in China, and the mass deaths seen under his rule are written off as "mistakes," since the Communist leadership has such a strong grip on public discussion of history and Mao's legacy.
Due to the nature of the statue, many criticized it, with some pointing out the "insensitive" location of the statue.
Henan province was the center of the "Great Famine" that hit China in the late 1950s as a result of Mao's failed economic policies that is estimated to have killed as many as 40 million.
With that in mind, one poster on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, asked: "Have you forgotten about the Great Famine, building that?"
However, for the most part, people were supportive of the statue, with one Weibo user calling it "bad-ss."
