Chinese Communist Party Congress: greatest comedy show on earth

[KichigaiNeko]

For the residents of Beijing, life has been less than convenient over the past few days as the Communist party’s national congress has covered the city in propaganda banners, flooded streets with police and slowed the internet to a crawl. But they have been compensated with an unexpected amount of entertainment at what turns out to be a huge show.

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One of the most popular performers has been the congress delegate Li Jian, Director of the Forestry Institute from Ningxia, an impoverished region in Northwestern China. He told reporters that the proceedings excited him so much he started crying. “I shed tears for five times when I was listening to President Hu’s report,” Li said.
Jokes about such show outpourings of loyalty to the party have set the Chinese blogosphere alight. Many younger Chinese were also taken aback by how empty phrases and declarations of loyalty to century-old Communist ideology still dominate the party’s gathering although they appear to have nothing to do with the modern, quasi-capitalist society they live in. When the party opened its congress last Thursday, the more than 2,300 delegates lowered their heads for half a minute in deferential silence to mourn the party’s ‘revolutionary heroes’.
But behind the choreographed façade, few, if any, in the party believe in its ideology any more. “Why have so many of our leaders’ children gone abroad?” asked one post on a discussion forum on Baidu, China’s biggest online search engine. “As they can’t see hope of China’s future!” wrote a web user named “sign, future”.
A financial industry professional who comes from a prominent Communist party family said he had been implored by one relative, a former senior official, not to join the party, to leave the country and not to come back.
A local party official admits in an off-record chat: “Of course I don’t believe in the Communist party and its ideology.”
Some grassroots party members are struggling to uphold their beliefs as well. “When I joined the Communist party as a soldier, the party was good, but now it’s corrupted and bad,” says an elderly party member who claims to have been a member for more than 50 years.
It is therefore not surprising that the verdict of ordinary people on the congress is a sober one. On Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog, an ad agency manager writes: “It’s like a total new version of the emperor’s new clothes. Only the emperor here is probably also deaf, as he seems not to be able to hear the hiss from off stage.”

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Zhao Tianqi and Kathrin Hille

Soource: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/11...ised=false