China Adds a Feature to Phones: Patriotism

State-controlled Chinese phone company, China Mobile, has changed customer’s ring-back tones to a patriotic song for the October 1st holiday. The song, sung by Jackie Chan, is the patriotic song called “Guojia” (country):

The lyrics include the following lines: “A country stands up in the world,” “Only when we have a strong country can we have a prosperous family,” and “Country is glorious perseverance.”

…The company’s representative said any customer who did not like the tune could switch to other options at no cost by following instructions on its Web site.  She said she did not know how long the song would continue to play otherwise… But Hu Xingdou, a reform-minded economics professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, said China Mobile went overboard in tinkering with its customers’ phones.

“The current efforts to instill ideology makes me feel that the authorities consider ordinary Chinese people to be unpatriotic or even mentally challenged,” he said. “So they enforce this patriotic education on people.”

See the video and hear the song here:

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