China vs. the internet.
On the one hand, there is the moral purity and uprightness of the past. On the other, there is so much glitz and so...much...money. It's hard not to imagine Chinese ideologues wishing they lived in North Korea.
On the one hand, there is the moral purity and uprightness of the past. On the other, there is so much glitz and so...much...money. It's hard not to imagine Chinese ideologues wishing they lived in North Korea.
While China’s resurgent Communist Party once pushed its policies on an unquestioning public, it now struggles to compete for attention with the country’s booming entertainment industry and the celebrity culture it has spawned."Unfair????" Isn't that the whine most often associated with battered liberals and not stick-straight bureaucrats?
“Chinese people are increasingly ignoring party propaganda and are much more interested in movie stars, who represent a new lifestyle and more exciting aspirations,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong....
A recent commentary in The Global Times, a party newspaper with a nationalistic stance, railed against such celebrity worship, saying China had now surpassed the West in that regard.
“It’s unfair that these stars accrue such glory, unimaginable to those who have made a decisive contribution to the country,” the commentary said.
A disinterested electorate, how rare.
ReplyDeleteThey’ll have to allow Facebook back in to influence opinion.
ReplyDeleteWhat irony that would be! LOL!!