An outspoken academic has launched a scathing attack on the propaganda blitz marking the Communist Party's 90th anniversary, saying the ongoing campaign is deifying the party.
In an open letter to the party leadership just two days ahead of tomorrow's anniversary, Professor Zhao Shilin, a scholar at Beijing's Minzu University of China, also criticised the propaganda machine for trumpeting the party's successes and achievements 'selectively', while deliberately ignoring the 'terrible mistakes' the party has made. 'Don't deify and glorify the Communist Party in the propaganda campaign to mark the party's 90th anniversary,' Zhao wrote.
As the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party has drawn closer, the country has been swept up in a wave of orchestrated revolutionary nostalgia unseen since the Cultural Revolution. The propaganda blitz includes a star-studded patriotic film and massive media coverage, with major newspapers and internet portals decorating their front pages and home pages with red backgrounds and patriotic banners. Television audiences are being bombarded with documentaries, dramas and revolutionary songs praising the party and hailing its success.
Zhao also attacked an ongoing campaign, launched by Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai some three years ago and now flourishing across the country, urging citizens to sing 'red songs'. In the run-up to the anniversary, the Chinese people have been constantly urged 'to love the party, love the nation and love socialism'.
Propaganda tsar Li Changchun , ranked No 5 in the party's nine-man Politburo Standing Committee, recently ordered state media to create 'a dense atmosphere of solemnity and ardour, joy and peace, unity and advancement and scientific development'.
'[We] should not let the 'masters' (the people) say to the 'servants' (party officials) every day 'the party is my dear mother',' Zhao wrote, referring to popular songs that describe the ruling party as the people's beloved mother. The party says ordinary people are masters of the country and party officials their servants.