Write after me: China’s Communist Party members ‘must put hearts’ into transcribing full 15,000-character constitution

The Communist Party has ramped up its campaign to have its 88 ­million members write out by hand all 15,000 characters of its constitution, with the military mouthpiece demanding cadres put their “wholehearted effort” into ­completing the endeavour.

But analysts said such a campaign was unlikely to generate much effect other than becoming an object of ridicule.

The article, published on Tuesday in the PLA Daily, warned party members against merely going through the motions of copying out the constitution without truly understanding the full meaning of the text before they posted their ­efforts on social media.

The project was launched in March as part of a wider campaign called “Two Studies and One Becoming” – namely, studying both the party’s constitution and the speeches of President Xi Jinping and becoming a qualified party member.

The PLA Daily warned: “If the copying out is just about moving the pen and is not done wholeheartedly … if it fails to touch the thoughts and the soul, the well-intended campaign will lose its meaning and be reduced to a form of delicate formalism.