Beijing, April 2 (AP): Mao Anqing, the last surviving son of Mao Zedong, the founder of China’s communist government, was buried today with state leaders as the thousands of mourners watched, state media reported.
Mao Anqing, 84, died on Friday. No cause of death was given. “Mourners, many dressed in military uniform, queued up quietly outside the memorial hall at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in western Beijing to pay their last respects,” Xinhua News Agency said.
Mao Anqing’s wife Shao Hua and other close relatives were present, it said.
Mao Anqing, who had no role in government, suffered from psychiatric problems and is believed to have spent much of his adult life in mental hospitals.
Mao Anqing was born in 1923, the second son of Mao and his first wife, Yang Kaihui, while they were activists. Yang was executed in 1930 by the then-ruling Nationalist government. In 1936, Mao Anqing and his older brother, Anying, were sent first to Paris and then to Moscow. They returned in 1947 before the communists’ 1949 victory in a civil war that overthrew the Nationalists.