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	March 1, 2000	atimes.com

China

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: Statuary rape
By Bradley Martin

Here's another reason why China is so much more successful economically than its communist neighbor, North Korea: expensive monuments. Or, rather, lack of same.

Last week the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council sent out a circular reiterating an earlier ban on building memorials to honor dead leaders.

Evidently many localities didn't think Beijing was serious the first time and ''have grown lax in the implementation of the ban, and in some places the rule has been completely ignored'', the circular said, according to a Xinhua report.

''Building a memorial for a late leader is unnecessary, as leaders at or above the provincial and ministerial levels joined the revoutionary ranks only to serve the public - not for public recognition.'' Building memorials for them without party authorization ''runs counter to their intentions and is disrespectful to the thousands upon thousands of revolutionary martyrs. Since the country has limited land resources, memorial building on farmland, in forested areas and even in scenic spots is a huge waste and sets a bad precedent for future generations.''

Try telling that to the ghost of the late North Korean Great Leader Kim Il-sung, whose statues - usually gigantic - and pictures are everywhere in his country, most of them dating to the time when he was still among the living, building his personality cult and craving ever more ''public recognition''.

It may be that the Chinese actually did tell that to Kim, more than 20 years ago when he was still very much alive. In 1979, visiting Pyongyang to cover the world table tennis tournament, I heard that a Japanese newsman had been expelled and sent home early after filing an article in which he reported that the gold coating on a 20-meter bronze statue of the Great Leader had been removed.

The offending article cited a rumor among foreign residents in Pyongyang that Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, during a visit not long before, had suggested to President Kim that a golden statue might be a bit too extravagant a display for a socialist country then seeking Chinese economic aid.

China had enough experience to give such advice then. The country had wasted considerable resources of its own building images of Mao Zedong. Kim Il-sung was to a large extent just trying to outdo Mao. But following Mao's death the more businesslike Deng had gotten his country's priorities straighter.

Deng's advice, if indeed it was given, did not at all slow the Pyongyang regime's monumentally expensive monument-building program - which Kim's son and heir, Kim Jong-il, was pushing as a way to flatter his father, insure the regime's survival and secure his own succession.

The elder Kim died in 1994. These days, adding museums and other projects to glorify the son is the order of the day in North Korea. Visitors to Mt Paektu can see, for example, the totally fake log cabin ''birthplace'' of the current leader. (Actually he was born at a Soviet military camp near Khabarovsk, where his father was doing a stint as a Soviet army captain.)

The Xinhua article from Beijing last week quoted the Chinese leadership's circular as saying Deng Xiaoping's family had repeatedly asked the State Council to reject requests by localities to build memorials to Deng, who died in 1997 after pioneering the country's reform and opening. The Central Committee has honored their wishes and so far hasn't built even a single Deng memorial, it says.

North Korea, meanwhile, has experienced neither reform nor opening. Some estimates say as many as three million of its citizens starved in the late 1990s.

Where is the North Korean Deng?

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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