‘It’s a trap’: daughter of revolutionary warns China’s Communist Party over concert featuring Cultural Revolution songs

The daughter of a revolutionary has warned Communist Party leaders that organisers of a concert featuring Cultural Rev­olution-era “red songs” were laying a “political trap”.

The organiser must “have some ambitions ... we should be alert”, Ma Xiaoli told Ifeng.com, suggesting the concert was an attempt to paint the leadership as a personality cult.

She was referring to a show at the Great Hall of the People that featured songs praising the Communist revolution and Mao Zedong, performed against a backdrop of propaganda posters from the period.

Ma’s father Ma Wenrui was persecuted alongside President Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun during the Cultural Revolution for leading an “anti-party clique”.

The controversy over the concert comes at a sensitive time, as May 16 marks the 50th anniversary of the mass movement, responsible for some of the most violent upheaval since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.

Accusations fly thick and fast over Chinese cultural group’s Cultural Revolution ‘red songs’ concert

Ma did not identify exactly who was laying the trap.