If there’s one thing we know for certain about China in 2019, it’s that people there love their apps. They use WeChat to talk with friends; they spend hours battling virtual enemies on PUBG; they binge-watch short videos on Douyin. And so why shouldn’t the Communist Party get in on the action?
Xuexi Qiangguo — “study and make the nation great” — has become ubiquitous in China, an instant messenger, news aggregator and social network all in one introduced by the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in January. The first and second characters in the name, when combined — xuexi — mean “study/learn”; the same character, xi, also happens to be the character in President Xi Jinping’s surname. The app’s name, thus, can also be read as “study Xi and make the nation great.” And the Chinese are doing so, by the tens of millions.
As of late March, Xuexi Qiangguo had been downloaded over 73 million times on Huawei’s app store. It’s also currently the most-downloaded app on Apple’s Chinese app store, which is hard to reconcile with its average rating of just 2.7 stars out of five, until you take into account that all government and state-owned-enterprise employees, along with tens of millions of party members, have been “encouraged” to use it…
I wanted to experience Xuexi Qiangguo for myself… So last month I downloaded it and signed on. Suddenly there I was, immediately connected to my friends and colleagues. In the weeks since, I’ve been receiving several notifications a day; they include news coverage of Mr. Xi’s activities, a “golden quote of the day” from our president, “red patriotic songs” for me to listen to and links to online courses on traditional Chinese cultural heritage.
To do well on Xuexi Qiangguo requires a serious time commitment; those under peer pressure to use the app are typically expected to score two or three dozen points a day, and sometimes more. “Thirty points per day would only put me at the bottom among the members of the party branch I belong to,” one user on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, told me. “My colleagues are so passionate about competing,” the user said…
But to really score highly, I needed to take the quizzes — to answer questions on Mr. Xi’s speeches and works. That was where the real points were: If I correctly answered all the quiz questions, I could earn 24 points total.
And the questions were easy. The first one I encountered: “(Blank) is contemporary China’s Marxism, the 21st century’s Marxism, the guidance for our Party and our people to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, a proven, practically great, powerful ideological weapon, and must be persisted in and developed consistently over a long term.” The answer? “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” of course. What else?
Another question looked trickier at first glance: “Sticking to the Party’s overall leadership and coordination among different sectors, to build up a system with the Party’s full leadership role, and guarantee that the Party’s leadership is carried out in domains such as (blank), (blank), and (blank)”. Luckily, it was multiple choice. Among the answers were (A) Reforming, development and maintaining stability; (B) Domestic politics, foreign policy and defense; and (C) Governing the Party, the nation and the military. The answer was all of the above; the party is omnipotent, our leader in all arenas.
I gave up after about half an hour, earning a measly nine points. “Post your point of view and collect one point,” the app prompted. Why not? I thought, and moved into the comment section, only to be greeted with instructions like “only valid points of view will be awarded points” and “good comments will be prioritized for display.”…
Developed by the tech giant Alibaba, Xuexi Qiangguo has a certain polish to it. And it comes with some additional perks: Users can redeem their study points in businesses across the country for gifts like pastries, tablets, restaurant discounts and even free sightseeing tickets.
But no matter how fancy the new products look on the surface, at their core they remain the mandatory study of ideologically correct materials and the demonstration of allegiance to the central government. The minute I entered the quiz section, memories of my middle school years in Chinese classrooms came flooding back: the grandiose language, the endless repetition, the fixed answers, the publicly displayed class rankings — the collective memories of Chinese students across several generations. Many Weibo users have pointed out the parallels between Xuexi Qiangguo and the fervent “Little Red Book” campaigns of the Mao era.
And as with so many instances in which the government demands correct thought, there are already those who have learned to cheat the system. There are a sizable number of articles on how to earn credits efficiently circulating on WeChat, while tech-savvy users have turned to GitHub to download software that will earn points for them on the app automatically while they spend their time elsewhere…
So how effective has this new app effort been? Online user feedback is currently prohibited on the Apple app store, so we can gauge user’s reactions only through their earlier comments, before feedback was turned off. “Good, good, good,” one reviewer wrote. “Whatever you want me to say.” “We voluntarily downloaded this,” wrote another reviewer, who gave the app one star. “Truly.”
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Just The Facts! 2nd editionis a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
I suspect that media integration as conceived by leaders of the Communist Party of China means something very different from that imagined by Westerners.
A senior Communist Party of China (CPC) leader, on Wednesday called for media integration and creating favorable public opinion for the upcoming party congress.
Liu Yunshan
Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks during an inspection tour of the People's Daily.
Liu urged staff on the newspaper to make more new media products and extend their influence to the Internet. He also stressed that new media should shoulder social responsibility and guide online public opinion.
"Media integration needs to abide the CPC's ideology and the Marxist idea of the press," Liu said. "Content is the key to the development of media integration, and more new media workers must be trained."…
Liu said the most important issue for the Chinese media this year was preparing for the 19th National Congress of the CPC.
He called for strengthening political responsibility, enhancing representation of mainstream public opinion, and providing opinion for the stability of the economy and society.
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Up until a decade ago, Chinese government propaganda was easy to spot. It was full of stock phrases and awkward English and paranoia. Not so much anymore. PR execs with degrees from American universities?
China has been trying and failing for years to get its people, especially its young people, to care about its political system. Could it now be close to working out how to do just this?
Every March, the National People Congress (NPC), China's biggest annual political event, goes virtually unnoticed by the vast majority of the Chinese people…
But as the propaganda platform shifted from rice paper to LED screens, the government has developed new tricks.
One of its first big successes was the music video of "Shisanwu", the 13th Five-Year Plan, which came out in 2015. So how do you sell the idea of the 13th five-year social and economic development strategy to young people?
Shisanwu
An animated music video with a foreign band singing in English of course.
It became an instant hit on social media with young people talking about it, sharing it and even learning to sing it…
The Chinese State Council also released a series of newsy digital videos featuring people's wishes in the run-up to the congress.
They even interviewed carefully-chosen celebrities, such as Hu Weiwei, entrepreneur and founder of China's most successful shared electronic bikes and a viral sensation in China…
The propaganda initiative has even stretched as far as a group on WeChat, China's most popular social media app…
WeChat screen
Critics say it's the same old propaganda, just on new platforms.
But they show a desire to innovate on the part of the government and state-run media and engage the public on the platforms where they know people prize such innovation.
They can claim success in one respect: at the very least they are getting young people to talk about the congress.
Five years ago this was not happening.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6, and
a description of the AP exam format. $2.00. Order HERE.
Our perceptions and prejudices affect the way we understand things. How do we perceive Nigeria? What things influence our perceptions? Are well-off Nigerians right to worry about how Nigeria is presented in the media? Are they more worried about perceptions than reality?
During a recent trip spent traveling across Nigeria, a banker friend of mine advised me to “keep things positive” if I ever shared my observations in “western media”. I pointed out Nigeria is currently in dire economic straits; many civil servants haven’t received a salary this year, pensions are going unpaid, people are struggling to feed their families and children are actually starving to death in the country’s north-east. “Writing about it won’t help those people. And you know negative western media stories on Africa only make these white folk and others look down on us,” my friend replied…
When it comes to western media coverage of Africa, the continent’s privileged classes are usually more concerned with the perceptions created than with the realities depicted. They find images of suffering Africans annoying because these “perpetuate negative stereotypes”. The actual suffering rarely elicits as much outrage as the fact it is being exposed for the world to see.
Meanwhile, whenever I chatted with regular Nigerians, once they heard I’m a journalist (in Europe), they’d say something like: “Make sure people over there know we are suffering here,”…
62.6% of Nigerians currently live in poverty, compared to 27.2% in 1980. Yet for some Nigerians, “balanced media coverage” amounts to talking up the latest individual success story as evidence that the country is “making progress”. What kind of progress sees the percentage of people living in poverty more than double since 1980?…
In 2014 the World Bank reported that Nigeria had the third highest number of poor people in the world. The then president Goodluck Jonathan bristled at the suggestion, saying: “If you talk about ownership of private jets, Nigeria will be among the first 10 countries, yet they are saying that Nigeria is among the five poorest countries.”…
Jonathan’s ludicrous response aptly illustrates the prevalent attitude within the privileged classes. It is a combination of denial bordering on the delusional coupled with a post-colonial hangover – emotional responses which attempt to shout down unpleasant statistics and imply that whenever the western world talks of African poverty, the aim is to paint the continent in a bad light.
Then there is the irritation stemming from the knowledge that the constant reports about violence, famine or dysfunctional governments, however well-intentioned, help nurture the racist-colonialist narrative that Africans are generally incapable of efficient self-rule. This is at once extremely frustrating and worrisome, especially for well-educated Africans who, as individuals, feel no less capable than their European or Asian counterparts…
Nigeria, being Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, remains its greatest potential. But the country’s privileged classes must first stop trying to downplay the extent of Nigerian poverty just because it makes us look bad. This is not just selfish, it is dangerous, for the poor are not going anywhere. On the contrary, their numbers are growing thanks to Nigeria’s current population boom. Add to this a ballooning youth unemployment rate and the 350 million illicit handguns the UN says are circulating in the country, and you have a ticking time-bomb.
It’s time the well-off in society stopped trying to sugar-coat Nigeria’s harsh reality and expect the status quo to continue undisturbed. Otherwise, that reality could soon explode with a vengeance. By then, western media coverage would be the least of every Nigerian’s problems.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6, and
a description of the AP exam format. $2.00. Order HERE.
When I began studying Chinese politics, the propaganda that emanated from Beijing was clearly out of touch with the wider world. Today, the propaganda is much more sophisticated and aware of culture and politics outside of the Central Kingdom. This video is a demonstration of that sophistication.
A rap song in English aiming to tell foreigners "the truth" about China has been released by … China's Communist Youth League
It features a mix of traditional Chinese elements against modern rap.
It says China has "terrible problems" but is peace-loving, affluent and at the forefront of scientific research…
It… explains that China is a "developing country and is really hard to manage", and acknowledges the many incidences the country has gone through, such as the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, where dairy products were found tainted with melamine.
However, its chorus concludes that its people still "love the country".
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6, and
a description of the AP exam format. $2.00. Order HERE.
Teaching (and learning) comparative government and politics is a complex and demanding task. We can all use all the help we can get. This cyber place is somewhere to facilitate helpful interactions.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
