A controversial, gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong that stood over China's countryside has been removed just a few days after it was completed, state media reported Friday.
The 121-foot statue made headlines across the globe when it was completed, and pictures of it surfaced online earlier this week, reported BBC News. However, its fame wasn't solely attributable to its size, but also to the controversy that followed.
The controversy in question wasn't just rooted in the fact that it depicted Mao Zedong, the communist ruler of China who saw the deaths of millions of Chinese during his rule, but also the fact that the region where the statue was built, Henan province, was the center of the "Great Famine" that hit China in the late 1950s, which had come about due to Mao's failed economic and agricultural policies.
Many users protested the statue at the time, noting the "insensitive" location of the statue.
"Have you forgotten about the Great Famine, building that?" asked one poster on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter, according to AFP.
However, as it turns out, the demolishing of the statue had nothing to do with the controversial nature of the statue or the online backlash that resulted from it, but regulation codes.
The $460,000-statue was paid for mostly by a group of capitalists and the rest by local villagers in the form of small contributions, but those building it failed to get the statue registered or approved by the government, prompting officials to order its immediate removal, according to Fox News.
Land resource officials at Tongxu county also confirmed the turn of events.
Despite being responsible for millions of deaths, 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.
