RUCHENG COUNTY, CHINA ¨C In the heart of an impoverished village in southern China, a life-sized statue of Mao Zedong sits on a platform adorned with intricate stonework, flanked by a diorama of Red Army soldiers and traditional brick-and-tile homes with curved roofs.
Officials have spent a small fortune on the project that has transformed the village of Shazhou, in Hunan province, into an open-air museum dedicated to the Chinese Communist Party. But few tourists have come to peer at the inscription at the foot of Mao¡¯s statue, or take selfies in front of the heroes of the revolution.
The ¡°red tourism¡± project was the brainchild of the former Communist Party chief of the local county, Rucheng, and cost 300 million yuan ($44 million). But it has yet to produce a profit, just like the string of public gardens, town squares and office buildings that the county has built in recent years.
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