Chinese movie mocked for distorting Mao Zedong’s role in second world war

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Chinese movie mocked for distorting Mao Zedong’s role in second world war

Trailer and poster for the movie, The Cairo Declaration, imply that former leader played a key role at a wartime summit that he never attended

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 18 August, 2015, 9:50am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 18 August, 2015, 10:54pm

Agence France-Presse in Beijing

Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, left, attended the Cairo Conference in 1943 where he is pictured with then US president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Social media users blasted a new Chinese film for depicting a summit of world leaders during the second world war which embellished history by portraying revolutionary leader Mao Zedong as vital to a conference he never attended.

The Cairo Declaration, an upcoming war film produced by a company affiliated with China’s military, is part of a host of government-directed events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender.

The US, Britain and China 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.

The poster for a move criticised over its version of history.

But the film’s trailer and poster have faced a backlash on social media and state media, with internet users pointing out Mao played no major role at the conference.

China, then known as the Republic of China, was instead represented by Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, who went on to lose China’s civil war to Mao’s Communist forces.

“I’m sad that my contributions at the Cairo Conference haven’t been recognised in the film,” joked one internet user.

Others were more jaded.

“Let Mao be a part of the conference. It’s not like the rest of our history is real anyway,” wrote another user.

China is planning to hold a large-scale military parade in Beijing next month to commemorate what it calls the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

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, the fictional character from The Lord of the Rings, as well as a Minion, the yellow workers from the Despicable Me film franchise.

One even has current President Xi Jinping, who was born in 1953, in Mao’s place.

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“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 tabloid.

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”.