What is China Thinking?

Something I can't figure out. They just unveiled the largest statue ever of the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century at Chongqing Medical University, apparently one of the top ten universities in this vast, populous country. I guess being the founding father of the modern Chinese state outweighs things like the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution--economic and political strategies that cost millions upon millions of innocent people their lives and which, certainly as far as economics is concerned, have been discarded by the current regime. The authorities--local or national--must have approved it (if they didn't initiate it also), otherwise this thing would not exist. Not knowing much about China, my guess would be that the power of Mao as a national symbol continues to be so significant, and China's national cohesion so brittle, that the regime not only doesn't feel it can't allow an honest reckoning with Mao's bloody legacy, but that it actually actively needs to employ Mao's mythic persona to hold things together. Apparently, this kind of thing still works among the majority of the Chinese population. All this seems to indicate that there are severe limits to a potential Chinese leadership role in today's globalized world: for one thing, the regime has its hands full staying on top of rapid economic, social, and cultural change at home; for another, a regime that still derives part of its legitimacy from a tyrant such as Mao would have little credibility seeking a leadership role in an increasingly open and openminded world (which would be one definition of globalization).