Locsin apologizes to China for anti-Mao remarks

MANILA, Philippines — Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has publicly apologized to China for making derogatory remarks against Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, on Twitter.

In his tweets the past week, the country’s chief diplomat likened Mao’s name to “burnt rice” and said the communist party founder “unleashed a famine” during his communist rule.

“My profound apologies to the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party responsible for its unprecedented achievements and Ambassador Zhao [Jianhua] for using the Great Helmsman’s name in vain,” Locsin tweeted on Sunday, referring to one of Mao’s titles.

“All this revisionism makes me — as the first defender of ‘Red China’ — forget my admiration,” he added.

On Oct. 9, Locsin called the Chinese iconic leader “Mao Che Tutung” while agreeing with a Twitter correspondent that Filipino leftists needed to move on from the philosophies laid down by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and Mao.

Burnt rice

Locsin said he loved “tutung,” which is burnt rice in Filipino.

“Move on from Lenin’s WHAT IS TO BE DONE and from MAO CHE TUTUNG THOUGHT (I love tutung.) There’s been Althuser since, and others. For God’s sake: READ. Marxism as a philosophy “remains to be” (as the baduy like to say) the one with the strongest explanatory power,” Locsin tweeted.

On Oct. 10, he praised a book by Dutch historian Frank Dikötter on how communist rule in China “plunged the country into decades of Maoist cruelty and chaos.”