Catching Up

Entrepreneurs and lesser folk among the Heathen Chinee have taken a great leap forward in public art by erecting a 118-foot statue of Mao Zedong. Its location is in Henan province, which is one of the country's poorest regions and was among those worst affected by Mao's bureaucratic famine; so the steel and concrete statue has been painted gold all over, just to rub it in. This could well be another encouraging sign that the Heathen Chinee are beginning to emerge from their decades-long darkness of central planning, green crap and population control: despite its comparative lack of Middle Eastern princelings and rich Russian thugs, Henan province is somehow managing to emulate the civic rationality and architectural good taste of London under the Bullingdons.