Mao losing currency

last updated 8 January 2015

Beijing

The face of Chairman Mao may soon disappear from the Chinese yuan. A government panel this week recommended that the next generation of banknotes feature pictures of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist economic reformer, and Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary who toppled the last Chinese emperor. Images of Mao Tse-tung, the father of Communist China, were once ubiquitous on billboards and posters, but are now mostly confined to the currency. Deng was largely responsible for the dismantling of Mao’s cult of personality, ordering an end to the mass production of Mao paraphernalia. Deng may be the more appropriate figure to represent money, anyway, as it was he who said, “To be rich is glorious.”