Great Leaps Forward

Chow Yun Fat stars as Yuan Shikai, the second President of the Republic, in Beginning of the Great Revival.Photograph by: Submitted photo, China Lion

Every country likes to celebrate itself. Often it's the people who will do that, in thanksgiving for living in a country that satisfies their needs, that offers growth and fulfilment of aspirations while supplying all the basic needs of populations; health services, civic-judicial and security-social stability, education, employment.

And often enough that celebration is led by the government itself. Particularly unpopular governments of strict, autocratic regimes. Whose purpose is to engender a collective atmosphere of patriotism, related directly to the ideological-political underpinnings of the government.

And in China, where 'harmony' is the elemental social adhesive is sought by the government so that all the disparate parts of the whole expressing the views of various ethnicities, religions, languages, customs and heritage values, have a common link; the kind of socialism practised by the Chinese Communist Party.

There is much to condemn in the dread events that took place during the Cultural Revolution when millions of Chinese died from starvation, and at a time when the intelligentsia were persecuted and children were programmed to betray their parents and cleave instead to the Communist Party which would provide all they would ever need, and everyone was expected to gravitate to the countryside and be a peasant.

But the country has had its more recent, and staggering successes, where hundreds of millions of Chinese were lifted out of dire poverty into a new economic middle class. And the creation of millions of jobs for emerging youth with the promise of ongoing manufacturing successes because the world has learned to rely on the cheap labour and cheap production costs of Chinese goods.

China's propaganda czar, Li Changehun, has ordered state media to observe and assist in promoting "a dense atmosphere of solemnity and ardour, joy and peace, unity and advancement and scientific development". The Chinese do tend to get carried away in bizarre displays of purple prose in praise of their accomplishments, it's true.

A celebratory television series has been created highlighting songs like The East is Red, Without the Chinese Communist Party There is No New China, We Travel on the Great Road, and Striking Down the Western Powers. The song titles are ablaze with clumsy affirmations of superiority, and smack of the kind of artistic endeavours that result when a painting is a group effort by committee. Typically communist, in other words.

Most notable, however, is a historical epic documentary-fictionalized dramatic account of China between the Qing Dynasty (1911) and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Rather amusingly, General Motor's Shanghai subsidiary appears to be the chief business partner, which is to say funding entity for this piece of self-congratulatory propaganda.

Many Chinese companies insist their employees view the film, despite generally negative comments from viewers. Those negative comments are seen as being responsible for popular movie review websites disabling their star rating systems. By order, without a doubt, of Beijing.

Honestly, people can be such unappreciative ingrates.