Hedging is the practice of taking a position in one market to offset and balance against the risk adopted by assuming a position in a contrary or opposing market or investment. The word hedge is from Old English hecg, originally any fence, living or artificial.
BEIJING -- Every morning, as many as 20,000 people flock to Tiananmen Square to join the vast queues of pilgrims, often stretching a kilometre long, at the entrance to the tomb of Mao Zedong. They stand for an hour or more, in blazing sun or winter cold, waiting patiently to pay their respects to the Great Helmsman. They place flowers at the foot of a Mao statue. They gaze reverentially at the chairman's crystal coffin, often bowing to the waxy corpse inside.
The slogan came from a saying of Confucius, Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of though contend.. It implied that the give and take of the ideas was not only healthy but beneficial to the state. In the spring of 1957, Mao Zedong invited the intellectuals to criticize the communist system of the People's Republic.