NEW YORK — Thursday marks the 120th birthday of Mao Zedong, founding father of the People’s Republic of China, but the leadership’s celebrations of his legacy are an alarming reminder that China has a long way to go before it can join the league of modern nations.

President Xi Jinping has called for Mao commemorations that are “solemn, austere and practical.” The Communist Party machine is publishing essays, signed by high-level members of the official policy think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The Great Hall of the People in Beijing, seat of China’s legislature, is organizing a concert of revolutionary songs in praise of Mao for 10,000 people.

These displays of ardor extend across the country. Mao’s hometown, Xiangtan City, in Hunan Province, is spending $2.5 billion on public events celebrating him. In the southern city of Shenzhen, a gold statue of Mao on a jade pedestal, costing $16.5 million, has just been unveiled.

It’s no surprise that China’s leaders have chosen to honor Mao with such pomp. In the decades following the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, Mao’s cult of personality formed the cornerstone of the one-party system. Under the next paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, the cult of Mao moderated, and limited criticism of his worst disasters was permitted. Chinese rule became more consensus-based: by no means democratic, but guided by the Politburo Standing Committee rather than a single person’s whims. But now, as the economy has slowed, China’s leaders have found it necessary to defend the Community Party’s monopoly on power by invoking the nation’s “glorious” history — with Mao’s legacy its most potent tool.