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Donors to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal reportedly wanted to erect a statue of Chinese communist leader Chairman Mao Zedong at the institution's law school alongside one of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
"They suggested one of Trudeau and Mao together," University of Montreal spokesperson Geneviève O’Meara told Canadian news outlet The Globe and Mail in a report published Tuesday.
The former prime minister and father of current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau established diplomatic relations between Canada and China in the early 1970s and eventually traveled to Beijing where he met and shook hands with Chairman Mao in October 1973.
Chairman Mao Tse-Tung met with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau at Chungnanhai in Peking on the afternoon of Oct. 13, 1973. (Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images)
The two exchanged words over social issues, the Canadian economy and more.
The Globe claimed a national security source told them Chinese billionaire donor Zhang Bin pledged a $1 million donation to the foundation after a diplomat urged him to do so and incentivized him by promising full reimbursement.
Some of the funds were reportedly intended to place Trudeau's statue at the university, the outlet claimed, pointing to a press release no longer available on the university's webpage.
CHINESE CURRENCY STILL DEPICTING MAO ZEDONG INDICATES ‘LEFTIST MURDERERS GET A PASS’ IN HISTORY
1982- Close-up of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, seated at a desk with a glass of water. Photo filed 9/8/1982. (Bettman /Contributor/Getty Images)
Chairman Mao, the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), served as chairman from 1949 until 1976 and amassed approximately 65 million deaths during his tenure, according to numbers from the Heritage Foundation.
Perhaps most notoriously remembered for his Great Leap Forward campaign, which led people's land and homes to be collectivized and forged into communes, Mao became a controversial figurehead of communism in China.
The Great Chinese Famine ensued and many starved to death as a result of the policy.
Now history remembers him as a mass-murderer.
Members of Red Guards, holding The Little Red Book, cheering Mao Zedong during a meeting to celebrate the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on Tien An Men square in Pekin on August 18, 1966. (Apic/Getty Images)
"Obviously, since Mao had no connection to the university, that suggestion was not an option for us," O’Meara told the Globe.
Trudeau's statue, however, would host a connection to the school since he was not only a law student at Montreal, but later taught there as well.
Another spokesperson for the university, Jeff Heinrich, told the outlet the Trudeau statue was never constructed in the first place.
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