From the Los Angeles Times:
For many Chinese, he’s a curious conundrum, an emerging national figure with some serious public relations issues.
The only grandson of Mao Tse-tung, the Great Helmsman himself, Mao Xinyu’s bloodlines ooze political royalty. Yet instead of praise, the 40-year-old faces ridicule as a pudgy underachiever shamelessly riding the coattails of the relative many consider this nation’s greatest statesmen.
When state media reported this week that the younger Mao had become the youngest officer to reach the rank of major general in the army his grandfather co-founded eight decades ago, critics unleashed another barrage of vitriol.
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Many claim one Mao in a leadership role was more than enough for China and that the military historian’s rise to public prominence carries a grim foreboding. Others decry what they call state-sponsored nepotism run amok.
