A bookshop manager leading a campaign to defend the legacies of Mao Zedong claims his movement has won significant political momentum from its recent petition calling for two scholars to be charged with sedition.
The petition, organised by the website Utopia, had collected more than 40,000 signatures by the time it was sent to the National People's Congress on June 15, says Fan Jinggang, co-ordinator of Utopia's campaign against 82-year-old economist Mao Yushi and 75-year-old historian Xin Zilin, a retired People's Liberation Army officer.
'The citizens' indictment campaign is now complete, but our condemnation of the nation's traitors will go on,' Fan said.
He said his campaign would continue to pass on its message like a torch in the darkness.
Fan says Mao Yushi and Xin's interpretations of Mao Zedong's campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the Cultural Revolution, were slanderous, and the pair deserved the title of han jian, or national traitors.
He said the most high-profile signatures obtained so far were those of Liu Siqi, widow of Mao Anying, Mao's son who died during the Korean war; Ma Bin, former vice-minister for the metallurgical industry; and Kong Qingdong, a professor at Peking University.