The Sculptor Xi Jinping Wants You to Forget

For 68-year-old Gao Zhen, last Aug. 26 wasn’t just any other day — it was the day of his arrest.

He was in China visiting family. Before he knew it, 30 officers were raiding his studio and confiscating sculptures. He’s an artist, see, and for the Chinese Communist Party, his art was something called a crime against “defaming heroes and martyrs.”

Among the works at issue: “Miss Mao,” a feminized, Pinocchio-nosed bust that calls Chairman Mao what the myth forbids: a liar, not a savior. “Mao’s Guilt” puts him on his knees giving the apology China’s courts will never allow.

The party took offense at these artistic portrayals — then supplied the crime. Through the Heroes and Martyrs Law, it launders bruised egos into illegality, redefining decade-old satire as “defamation” of a hero.

Since then, Gao has been held in Sanhe City Detention Center in Hebei Province, just outside Beijing. His health has sharply deteriorated. Chronic spinal pain forces him into a wheelchair and severe urticaria — an agonizing skin condition that burns and itches — robs him of sleep without medication.

Despite these conditions, he refused a plea deal that was offered to him: confess to the aforementioned defamation of “heroes and martyrs” and accept a prison sentence. A generous offer he refused. Still, he faces up to three years in prison in China’s unjust criminal system. His wife, a US permanent resident, and their seven-year-old son, a US citizen, have been barred from leaving China.

Gao’s imprisonment isn’t about just one artist, but about the party’s deeper need to guard the myth of Mao Zedong, which sustains Xi. Idolizing political leaders has always been the CCP’s modus operandi. This has been true since the rise of Mao, the founding architect of Communist rule in China in the 1940s. And it remains true to this day. Both while he lived and after, Mao’s reified position shielded him from accountability for engineering the deadliest famine in human history and Cultural Revolution that decimated a generation of intellectuals.

Xi understands that Mao’s myth, not Mao’s crimes, is what anchors the party’s claim to legitimacy. While earlier leaders carefully contained Mao’s excesses, Xi has swung the pendulum back, re-canonizing Mao as the foundation of his own rule. From the abolition of term limits to the mass indoctrination of “Xi Jinping Thought,” Xi has instrumentalized Mao’s legacy as his north star: purge rivals, weaponize ideology, and demand absolute loyalty. His rule depends on Mao’s untouchable myth, so if Mao can be mocked, Xi can be too.

Gao Zhen’s art stripped Mao and his proteges of their messianic aura and forced audiences to confront an inconvenient truth: They’re all tyrants.

In recent years, the CCP has been taming public discourse to ensure that everyone — from the political titans on top down to the lowly local politicians — is untouchable.

The 2018 Heroes and Martyrs Protection Law is the tool of choice to criminalize any irreverence of state propaganda: mocking a fireman who died in the line of duty or sarcastically referencing a revolutionary hero in passing merits conviction and condemnation. Why would the CCP care about lowly netizen comments or an artist who hasn’t been active in China for more than a decade? To show that it can.

When enforced amnesia is state policy, even remembering through art becomes subversion.

From bullying Czech venues into dropping Badiucao’s political cartoons to pressuring Thai authorities to pull works by Uyghur, Hong Kong, and Tibetan artists from a landmark exhibition, Beijing is ensuring that “China’s story” only has one narrator.

Gao’s case is a test for open societies. Demanding his release isn’t just about saving one artist — it’s about defending the right to create, to speak, to remember. Silence gives Xi the last word. Speaking out gives Gao — and history — a chance.