{"id":7221,"date":"2006-04-24T15:56:42","date_gmt":"2006-04-24T22:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2006\/04\/24\/chinas-many-messages-to-quell-unrest-robert-marquand\/"},"modified":"2016-08-15T17:58:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T00:58:48","slug":"chinas-many-messages-to-quell-unrest-robert-marquand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2006\/04\/chinas-many-messages-to-quell-unrest-robert-marquand\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s many messages to quell unrest – Robert Marquand"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Christian Science Monitor (link<\/a>):<\/p>\n

As Chinese leaders fret over rising peasant protests, political instability, and a decay of traditional values, the Communist Party is experimenting with multiple new messages – designed to capture the hearts and minds of ordinary people.<\/p>\n

“It is a very intelligent strategy,” says a Western historian here. “If people are nostalgic for Mao <\/a>[Zedong] and old moral values, they’ve got Lei Feng<\/a> [a model soldier lauded for selfless service]. For those who say China has lost its traditions, they promote Confucianism<\/a>. For those who long for spirituality, it is Buddhism<\/a>. The party is saying, ‘you name it, we’ve got it.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

But the disparate propaganda campaigns often seem like unrelated story lines in search of a central script. Last month, President Hu Jintao launched the “eight honors, eight disgraces<\/a>” – spelling out the virtues of hard work and discipline, and the vices of cheating and selfishness. Other campaigns include engineering a “new socialist countryside<\/a>,” promoting old model revolutionary soldiers such as Lei Feng as “cool” for kids, and biweekly ideology sessions for party members billed as a chance to “refresh your mind.”<\/p>\n

In a fresh twist, the Party is also quietly backing campaigns that diverge from the standard political propaganda: opening a department of Confucianism at People’s University<\/a>, turning the late pop star Cong Fei<\/a> into “young pioneer” style model, holding the first Buddhist forum in modern China on April 13. And a hard-core neo-Marxist faction has been allowed to rise – contrary to a decade of greater liberalization – which helped kill a proposed law allowing private property rights at the annual People’s Congress<\/a> last month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also Reuters’ “China issues slew of regulations to curb media<\/a>” carried by the Washington Post; also BusinessWeek’s “China’s ‘New Socialist Countryside’<\/a>” by Stephen Green<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Christian Science Monitor (link): As Chinese leaders fret over rising peasant protests, political instability, and a decay of traditional values, the Communist Party is experimenting with multiple new messages – designed to capture the hearts and minds of ordinary people. “It is a very intelligent strategy,” says a Western historian here. “If people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[100,5,1051],"tags":[690,7966,888],"class_list":["post-7221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society","category-top-article","tag-propaganda","tag-social-unrest","tag-tradition","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nChina's many messages to quell unrest - 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