On July 1 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will celebrate its centenary anniversary. Over the past several months the country has been inundated with a 24/7 tsunami of propaganda. Bookstores are filled with newly minted books with the ubiquitous hammer-and-sickle on their covers. China’s consumer goods industry is churning out a surfeit of communist kitsch—busts, buttons, statues, posters, plates, paintings, commemorative coins, and other memorabilia. Commemorative films play on television and in movie theaters. Work units and school children are being organized to go on pilgrimages to revolutionary sites (so-called “red tourism”). All 94 million Party members are undergoing re-immersion in the communist classics dating back to Marx, while communist martyrs are again eulogized.
The multifaceted campaign is inescapable, blanketing the nation. The CCP’s vaunted propaganda system is in overdrive. While different periods and themes are emphasized, one is at the center:
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