In China’s ‘Red Holy Land’, tourists mark Communist Party centenary
YAN’AN, China: Tourists pose for photos on Chairman Mao’s bed as the Chinese Communist Party marks its centenary year at home with PR push including office history outings, big-budget movies and carefully constructed media tours.
The ruling party, which celebrates the 100th year of its founding in Shanghai this July, has launched a propaganda blitz lauding its achievements over the past century in shepherding a poor, divided nation eviscerated by war into a global superpower.
The pomp is undiluted by the acrimony from the West, where politicians, experts and business leaders warn of the party’s supersized ambitions and criticise its human rights record.
In Yan’an, a western Chinese city that bills itself as a “Red Holy Land” where the party hunkered down in 1935 at the end of the Long March to build a revolution, thousands of tourists flock each day to the dark caves where Mao Zedong and his comrades made home.
Tourists come in large family groups or on tours arranged by their employers, including one group from Hunan who unveiled a banner in Chinese made for the centenary.
Zhang Zhenxing, a tech employee from Hebei on a company-organised trip, said he wanted to “experience how the revolutionary forebears achieved victory in such a difficult environment”.
“That they could build a new China under such difficulty was really not an easy feat, so I admire them deeply,” Zhang said.
Foreign media including AFP have been invited on government-organised tours of sites including Yan’an and Jinggangshan – the “birthplace” of the Red Army – where local officials are keen to show off infrastructure and poverty alleviation efforts.
Officials in Yan’an repeatedly cited Edgar Snow, an American reporter known for his friendship with Mao in the 1930s, as a model for telling China’s story to the world, urging today’s foreign correspondents to follow his example.
China’s President Xi Jinping, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party, has been on an image-making drive that puts his power and influence on a comparable level with Mao.
But in the age of tech and mass entertainment, his party has greater tools at its disposal to reinforce its narrative.
A blockbuster film, “1921”, starring A-listers in a reenactment of the Communist Party’s founding, is set to hit Chinese theatres on July 1, the official anniversary date.