THE SHADOW of Mao Xinyu’s grandfather, chairman Mao Zedong, looms over Chinese politics as ominously as the giant portrait of the Great Helmsman that keeps a watchful, and ever-so-slightly sceptical, eye over Tiananmen Square in downtown Beijing.
The chairman held total power right up to his death in 1976, and his embalmed body continues to lie in state in a mausoleum, the “Maosoleum”, on the central square.
The 40-year-old grandson bears an astonishing similarity to his legendary grandfather, the founder of the modern communist nation, although he looks more like the later Mao Zedong, when the revolutionary leader had put on a stack of weight and was about to unleash the maelstrom of political madness known as the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s.
Mao Xinyu is the son of Mao’s second son Mao Anqing, who died in 2007 at the age of 84. The children of the revolutionary era communists who rule China are known as the “princelings” and include vice-president Xi Jinping and Shanghai’s party boss Yu Zhengsheng.
Despite the promotion, it is unlikely his promotion will mean anything in real political terms.
A reasonably popular but comical figure in the Chinese political firmament, the younger Mao has managed to keep a high profile within the ruling Communist party that was his grandfather’s creation, following his elevation this week to major-general.
A researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences, he is the youngest ever to achieve major-general rank within the people’s liberation army and he wants to match this great rise with a more important role within the party’s firmament.
“Even before my mother died, she hoped I would get involved in politics,” he said in an online interview. “By entering the army, my mother chose for me a really good route and angle, and it’s from the military that I will develop.”
He has written numerous books, including My Grandfather Mao Zedong, and has served as a delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to China’s annual parliament.
He is fairly unashamed when it comes to admitting how nepotism is a help when trying to rise through the Chinese political spectrum. In an interview with the Netease site, Mr Mao said his family background had “definitely” helped his progress to major general.
“That is an objective fact, it can’t be avoided,” he was quoted as saying. “I think that my friends and my army colleagues have this feeling. Everyone shifts their respect and love of Chairman Mao on me, so this definitely was a factor.”
He studied history at Renmin University of China, earned a PhD at the Academy of Military Sciences and joined the army while pursuing his doctoral studies, and he is keen to keep the record straight about his family’s sacrifices during the revolution.
Mao Zedong had a busy personal life. He married four times, siring nine children in all, including his second son, Mao Xinyu’s father Mao Anqing. He had a daughter by his last wife, Jiang Qing, blamed as one of the Gang of Four accused of orchestrating the Cultural Revolution.