Chinese netizens troll Tibetan delegates for Mao, Xi badges

Tibetan legislators, who wore badgeswith photos of China's President Xi Jinping and past Communist leaders during the party's ongoing annual parliament session, have faced criticism from netizens for reviving the Mao-era practice of personality cult.
Internet users reacted with unease and said that it appears to be a return to the "cult of personality" crafted by Chairman Mao Zedong and employed during the violent Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a report in China's Caixin magazine said.
Tibetan delegates for the annual meeting of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, which began on March 5, wore two badges when they attended the opening session of the legislature's annual meeting on March 5.

One badge showed a smiling President Xi, head of the ruling-Communist Party, talking to a Tibetan woman.
The other showed the busts of Xi and his four predecessors as top leaders of the party and country, Mao, his successor Deng Xiaoping, former Presidents, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
Gesang Zhuoga, a delegate from a rural village in Tibet's provincial capital, Lhasa, said they wanted to wear the pins to show their "gratitude" to the party's top leaders for the changes made in Tibet, particularly in the past three years.

However, many Internet users said the badges, which are similar to ones worn during the Cultural Revolution, were a reminder of a period which saw the country brought to the brink of collapse.

One person wrote on Sina Weibo, China's micro-blogging site akin to Twitter, that the nation has moved past reminders of the cult of personality.
"As such, we should never allow the worship of an individual to become a fashion again," he wrote.
Another blogger wrote "If they are not told to stop doing this, other delegates could follow suit next year".