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Jasper Becker

The Communist Party is turning up the volume of self-congratulatory propaganda for its 80th anniversary celebrations on July 1 - to the irritation of many TV viewers.

Every night central television is broadcasting an episode of the Long March  series to highlight the Red Army's role in bringing the party to power.

The TV dramatisation Sister Zhang  tells the story of a communist guerilla imprisoned and killed by the Kuomintang in an infamous prison in Chongqing.

A series of concerts has also begun monopolising radio airtime and this will culminate later this month in a concert about the Long March by a middle school in Shanghai where the Communist Party was inaugurated.

Forty key artistic items - including films, plays and TV dramas - have been created in the past two years for the anniversary.

Among the celebratory music being broadcast are works by the PLA Song and Dance Troupe, including Our Troops are Marching Towards the Sun,  a newly composed orchestral symphony.

Each city is organising its activities. Beijing has put on a massive exhibition of relics, including a pistol used by army marshal Zhu De in the 1927 Nanchang Uprising - when the communists tried and failed to wrest power from the Kuomintang - and the first red flag raised on Tiananmen Square.

Party members in Wuhan have organised charitable works such as distributing care packages to the poor. In Guangan, the Sichuan home town of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, the local party has organised a performance by 1,000 people singing songs in praise of the party.

Yesterday, the People's Daily ran an editorial saying that history had shown the party to be 'a great, glorious and correct party'.

'Over the past 80 years, the three generations of central leadership with Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin at the core, respectively, have made enormous contributions to the development of the CCP, the victory of the socialist revolution, and the development of the socialist cause,' it said.

Many Chinese say they have little enthusiasm for the celebrations. 'They want to show the party is still there and this is because of Jiang Zemin,' said one Beijing newspaper editor.

Even on the People's Daily chat room, some contributors have voiced criticisms. One writer compared the devotion of communists portrayed in Sister Zhang  to their cause with that of Falun Gong followers who were willing to sacrifice everything for their beliefs.



Daily TV diet of praise for party served up for key anniversary