Chinese movie invents star role for Mao
Print Edition
A NEW Chinese movie which portrays Mao Zedong as playing a vital role at a wartime summit of world leaders he never attended has been ridiculed online.
“The Cairo Declaration” — a film produced by a company with ties to China’s military — is intended to form part of events commemorating the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender.
Leaders of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China all met in Cairo in November 1943 to map out a post-war path for Asia, during which they decided that territories ceded to Japan before the war should be returned to China.
But the film’s trailer and poster have faced a backlash on social media and state media, with Internet users pointing out that Mao played no major role at the conference.
China — then the Republic of China — was instead represented by Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek.
“I’m sad that my contributions at the Cairo Conference haven’t been recognized,” was one typical online comment.
A trailer for the film posted on YouTube opens with Mao making an impassioned speech saying: “The task for Communists around the world is to oppose Fascism through struggle.”
The poster advertising the movie features the actor playing Mao looking out into the distance, but a website has been set up allowing Internet users to mockingly edit themselves or others in his place.
Edited versions circulating on social media variously had in Mao’s place Gollum, one of the characters from “The Lord of the Rings,” as well as a minion, the yellow workers from the “Despicable Me” cartoon film franchise.
“By featuring Mao, who was not present at the meeting, but excluding Chiang, the poster shows no respect for history nor to Mao,” culture critic Sima Pingbang was quoted as saying by the Global Times.
An editorial in the Chinese-language edition of the newspaper, which has close ties to the Communist Party, called the use of Mao to promote the film “inappropriate.”
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