THEY came to praise their famous son under a miserable grey drizzle yesterday, but nothing could dampen the spirits of the Mao clan as they took pride in a new, if subtle, rehabilitation of the village boy from central China who shook the world.

Thirty years to the day after his death at the age of 82, the anniversary exposed how the memory of Mao Tse-tung has become a potent political issue between “reformers” and “leftists” arguing over the direction of the world’s fastest-growing economy.

Yesterday’s edition of the People’s Daily in the capital carried an extremely rare article by Mao’s surviving son, Anqing, headlined “Memories of my father”. It praised Mao as a selfless leader who hated corruption and refused to promote his relatives to positions of power.

The article, said Chinese analysts, was clearly inspired by powerful leftist figures in the present leadership and was probably not written by Anqing himself, who is in his eighties and is said to suffer from schizophrenia.

But it was music to the ears of the Shaoshan villagers, who lined up to place their wreaths of yellow flowers on bamboo frames at the foot of Mao’s statue in the valley where he grew up.

“I saw Mao when he came back to visit us in 1959,” quavered Mao Huaying, 91, who shares the surname with four-fifths of the villagers. “We loved him from the bottom of our hearts. There was no corruption and no crime in those days.”

Anqing’s article in the People’s Daily was the most politically charged work by a member of the family since Mao’s death.

It struck at the core of the Communist Party’s present dilemma over official corruption and the growing wealth gap in China. To Chinese who can decode the political message, it proved that there is real conflict inside the party elite.

“My father had just two sleeping gowns which he kept all his life, and there were 116 patches on them when he died,” wrote Anqing.

In Shaoshan they know that is true, because one of those well-patched gowns is solemnly displayed in a lavish new memorial hall built to honour the chairman opposite his statue.

“My father brought us up to be officials. He never put any money in the bank for us,” wrote Anqing. “He refused to use his high position to give our relatives any special privileges.”

The article was a bold assertion by leftist thinkers, who have already influenced the government of President Hu Jintao to modify the policies of “growth at any cost” pursued by Mao’s “reformist” heirs after 1979.

The changes include restrictions on property ownership, a drive to compel factories to recognise unions, and investigations into high-level graft.

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