The modern history wing of the National Museum in Beijing is a temple to the glories of the ruling Communist Party and leaders from Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to current President Hu Jintao.

But the museum, located across from Tiananmen Square at the political heart of the country, unsurprisingly fails to detail Mao's disastrous policies and the brutal chaos of his 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

The extensive displays of historical photos and artefacts dating from the late imperial period in the mid-1800s to today also avoid any mention of more recent political tumult such as the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests.

The museum will be the world's largest once all of its planned 191,000 square metres (more than two million square feet) are open to the public, authorities say.

Only the wing displaying China's modern history was opened Tuesday. The museum's other half, dealing with China's rich ancient past, will open later in March, said Huang Chen, a museum official.

Huang, however, insisted the museum dealt with taboo subjects like the Cultural Revolution.

"Go back and look. It is there," he said.

There are only oblique references to the upheaval, contained in displays on Deng's efforts to set China on a new path of economic development in the late 1970s that continues today.

The Cultural Revolution was a decade of political turbulence launched by Mao to bring down what he perceived as "capitalist" forces after other top leaders sought to move away from his radical utopian ideas.

Untold numbers died in the ensuing turmoil as students turned on teachers, officials across the country were purged and the country and its economy were brought to a virtual standstill.

The subject remains largely off-limits in China.

The museum also fails to mention Mao's "Great Leap Forward", a radical initiative he launched in 1958 to super-charge agriculture and industry, but which left both in shambles and was a key factor in the later resistance to his policies.

Estimates of the dead in a famine triggered by the "Great Leap Forward" have ranged as high as 45 million.

China's controversial rule of Tibet and its mainly Muslim Xinjiang region also went unmentioned.

Many Tibetans fiercely resent Chinese control of their Himalayan homeland. Violent unrest exploded across the region in 2008 and it remains under a tight security clampdown today.

Deadly ethnic rioting erupted in the Xinjiang regional capital Urumqi in 2009, exposing similarly intense anti-Chinese feelings and which was also followed by a crackdown.

The Tiananmen protests of 1989 saw thousands of people led by college students take to the square for weeks in the spring of that year to call for political reform.

Hundreds and possibly thousands were killed when the army crushed the demonstrations.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News