Twelve-year-old Chen Le is a typical Chinese kid. He loves flying paper airplanes, plays Ping-Pong and dreams of becoming a scientist. And he aims one day to join the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so, as Chen puts it, "I can puff out my chest and say I am a party member." The public school that Chen attends in China's southwestern metropolis of Chongqing was renamed the Red Army School earlier this year to pay tribute to the soldiers who gave their lives to the People's Republic. "I'm very proud of my school's new name because the Red Army soldiers were tough and had a strong spirit," says Chen, a little crimson kerchief tied around his neck. "I want to be as red as they were."
This summer, China is awash in red. As the nation commemorated the 90th anniversary of the CCP on July 1, hundreds of millions of schoolchildren, officials, retirees and even top Internet executives joined voices to sing "red songs" praising the motherland. Cinemas have rolled out the red carpet for a blockbuster propaganda film about the creation of the party. Local governments have sent out text messages with pithy quotes from Mao Zedong, the founder of the People's Republic, whose Little Red Book of sayings has for years been mere flea-market kitsch. (See pictures of China celebrating 90 years of communism.)
A Red Olympics with 200 teams was held with competitions like "Heroes Bombing the Bunkers" and "The Grenade Throw." Then there's the Red Army school program, which uses donations and other funds to instruct 1.15 million kids in academies named after the communist militia. "Our patriotism classes are even more patriotic than those of normal schools because loving our country is very important for our current society," says Fang Qiang, the secretary-general of the National Red Army Construction Project Council. "Our students all have a warm love for Chairman Mao."
Say what? Is this the same country that overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest economy last year, whose love of the free-market system has spawned thousands of books and created a whole industry of Western wide-eyed consultants? Indeed it is. Over the past three decades, the CCP may have replaced its founding revolutionary zeal with a turbocharged commitment to economic development; but the party has not managed to last for nine decades without a keen sense of survival. China's red revival might seem like a throwback, yet it is quite the opposite: a struggle for the future waged by the nation's leaders. As China's populace views its politicians as increasingly out of touch with a society beset by a widening income gap, the crimson tide is aimed at instilling pride in a country where there is no government but the party. "Looking back at China's development and progress over the past 90 years," said President Hu Jintao in his July 1 keynote speech, "we have naturally come to this basic conclusion: success in China hinges on the party." So that's clear. (See a gallery of the Chinese actors impersonating Chairman Mao Zedong.)
Leading the revival of attention to the CCP's history, myths, symbols and beliefs is an unlikely figure: Bo Xilai, party secretary of megalopolis Chongqing and the closest thing to a political rock star in China. In June, under Bo's directive, some 50,000 Chongqing residents flocked to a stadium to belt out red songs. Bo has replaced moneymaking commercials on local TV with red programming, and he has ordered cadres to the countryside to "learn from the peasants" - an echo of Mao's disastrous rural revolution.
All this is somewhat surprising. Bo's father was a famed communist contemporary of Mao, but he was purged during the Cultural Revolution. Bo, now 62, is hardly a revolutionary: he favors luxury cars and suits and sent his son to Harrow and Oxford. Prior to becoming Chongqing's leader, Bo earned praise in Western capitals as China's Commerce Secretary, ready to deal with the outside world. He doesn't seem the obvious type to sign off on scarlet billboards across Chongqing that urge residents to "spread mottoes" and "sing red songs." But sign off on them he did.
The Only Suitable Color
Look at China's political calendar, and a possible answer to the puzzle presents itself. Next year the CCP will begin a carefully composed, once-a-decade leadership transition as Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao ready themselves for retirement. As the jockeying for power gets under way, few want to be seen as anything less than loyal to a party that has ruled for 62 years. Bo has a good chance of being elevated to the hallowed ranks of the Politburo Standing Committee in the coming leadership reshuffle. His red fervor seems designed to help his cause.
See pictures of the largest military parade in China's history.
If politics explains Bo's zeal, he's chosen just the place to demonstrate it. Chongqing is a sprawling municipality of 30 million, and shares with only Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin a special status as a centrally run municipality. During World War II, Chongqing served as both the capital of the Nationalist government run by Chiang Kai-shek and as a base for the communists who were supposedly allied with Chiang in a popular front against the Japanese. (Chongqing's top red tourist attraction commemorates former jails where departing Nationalist agents executed imprisoned communist rebels.) Today, the river port is the investment gateway to China's underdeveloped hinterlands, and it is booming. Chongqing added 63 million sq m of new construction in 2010, 66% more than the year before. But with such growth have come social tensions. "Secretary Bo realized that people wanted more spirituality as Chongqing developed so quickly," says a Chongqing official who declined to be named. "So he gave them red culture in which they can sing songs and feel good."
Given that Chongqing has sold itself as China's reddest city, it's all the more puzzling that another city official I meet does not want to be named either. But I can see why when he begins his rhetorical somersaults. "There is a mistaken impression that red culture is just about the Chinese Communist Party," he begins. "That's not true. It also includes Confucius, democratic culture, Einstein, Shakespeare, even Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream.'" He then goes on to vaguely connect red culture to Michael Jackson. I question the Chongqing government's decision, then, to name its campaign after a color so associated with communism. With a smile, the bureaucrat, in his well-made clothes and expensive-looking watch, answers: "Well, you can't call it 'purple culture,' can you?" he says. "Or 'blue culture'? Other colors are not suitable." (See pictures of the making of modern China.)
Indeed not. But it is not only Chongqing officials who are searching for a guiding ideology - or hue. For all its successes, the CCP may be in the midst of a crisis. One day, China's long economic boom will, at the very least, slow down - planning chiefs are already scaling back expectations to 7% growth this year, after years of 8% or more. The risk for China's leaders is that, someday, they will not be able to depend on continuing increases in prosperity to buy acquiescence in CCP rule. Given that truth, it is little wonder that Bo and others who hope to one day lead China have fixated on a red-tinged spirit to unify the masses in these uncertain times.
And the times are uncertain. Even as Hu presided over a lavish 90th anniversary ceremony for the party in Beijing, he acknowledged serious problems. "The whole party," said Hu, "is confronted with ... lack of drive, incompetence, a divorce from the people, a lack of initiative, and corruption." From the leadership's standpoint, that does not bode well. Last year China saw 180,000 "mass incidents" ranging from labor protests to village riots, according to a sociologist at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University - a significant increase from the 74,000 officially reported in 2004. (See pictures of Hu Jintao's day at the White House.)
For a nostalgic faction in the Chinese leadership, it is the market-oriented economic reforms of Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping - which turned China into the world's factory - that are responsible for having allowed ills such as graft and income inequality to flourish. In national surveys from 2005 onward, Chinese have expressed progressively less satisfaction with their lives, even as their incomes have surged. "We can't stop divisions in society completely, but we can try to lessen the pain," says Fang Ning, director of the Institute of Political Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "The central theme of red culture is to promote unity and equality in society. China has had economic growth. Now we want to pay attention to social growth as well."
The Elite Snickers
In Chongqing, Bo has introduced various social reforms, including a comprehensive public-housing plan and a tree-planting effort that is greening a foggy, gray city. But his red crusade is unabashedly old-style. Under the party secretary's orders, 200,000 government officials are being sent to the villages to listen to farmers' wishes and learn from their struggles, though it is not clear that the program has been a hit. "When government officials came to our area, they just played poker in the field," said one online commenter. Another alleged: "You have to offer the officials good wine, good food and good women."
See "China's Great Swindle: How Public Officials Stole $120 Billion and Fled the Country."
Following central-government policy to concentrate on the rural sector, which risks being left behind as China's coast races toward the future, Bo has vowed to raise Chongqing farmers' incomes by 10,000 yuan ($1,540) within three years. At the city's exhibition center, I am guided through the "Red Culture Resources Exhibition," where one display shows a middle-aged farmer feeding chickens in an orange grove. But we are the only visitors, and the whole scene has been crudely Photoshopped, though my guide assures me it depicts authentic rural happiness. The program may have a hard time convincing those to whom it needs to appeal. I ask Wang Hong, a farmers' son who moved to the city because he couldn't make a living in agriculture, whether he expects his family farmland to reap the dividends promised by the authorities. "No way," he laughs. "I can't see that happening in my area."
Indeed, Bo's red revival is facing something of a backlash. For some Chinese, the color red brings back the bad memories of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when frenzied Red Guards rampaged nationwide. The resurgent glorification of Mao, who even staunch supporters have grudgingly labeled "70% right and 30% wrong," has alarmed others. As the red-culture campaign reached a crescendo this spring, economist Mao Yushi of Beijing think tank Unirule Institute of Economics wrote an online essay blaming Mao for overseeing the deaths of some 50 million Chinese. The Great Helmsman was "a backstage orchestrator who wrecked the country and brought ruin to the people," the academic wrote. Censors quickly purged his comments. (See why China's economy may defy the doomsayers.)
In an increasingly sophisticated nation, crude propaganda won't cut it. In late June the Chongqing Daily ran the story of a cancer patient who survived chemotherapy thanks to a regimen of red songs. The Chinese Internet howled in derision. The urban elite would have snickered if they had been with me when I was taken by an official guide on a staged visit to Chongqing's Oriental Garden, a comfortable apartment complex not far from a Ferrari and Maserati dealership, and whose community center is adorned with portraits of Marx, Lenin and Mao. As we strolled in, residents crowded around computers open to Web pages on Chongqing's red-culture drive. An elderly man gave a lecture on the hardships endured by China's founding communists.
The East Is Red
It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that none of these sentiments are genuine. For many Chinese of an older generation, "red" signifies an era in which equality and unity prevailed - or at least those virtues were cherished. To them, red culture denotes the blood spilled by communist soldiers and the selflessness of an idealistic generation of laborers and farmers. Wistfulness for this altruistic, can-do spirit infuses even young Chinese - who also recognize that a red affiliation doesn't look bad on a rEsumE. In 2009 the CCP welcomed 3 million new members; nearly half were university students. "We have great material conditions now, and we don't need to die for our country like the Red Army soldiers did," says Wei Zheng, a 22-year-old university student and party member from Hunan, Mao's home province. "So for me, red spirit means that I have to study harder and work harder." (See "China Takes on the World.")
Nor is there anything staged about the fervor of the 60 or so Chongqing residents, mostly middle-aged or older, who gather twice a week under a fig tree to belt out their favorite red songs. "The sun will never set on China," they warble before embarking on a rousing war march: "Enemies, wherever you are fighting from, we will find you and kill you."
The open question facing China is whether this backward-looking mood, with its celebration of the CCP, will resonate among those who have grown up in the 30 years since China has turned its back on Marxist economic planning and embraced the market. "These red songs teach very important values," says Yang Mingying, 60, a former teacher. "We cannot let the new generations forget that their happy lives today resulted from the sacrifices of all those Red Army soldiers." It's a universal sentiment: the old want the young to remember. But will they?
- with reporting by Chengcheng Jiang / Chongqing
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