The Communist Youth League, once a fast track to elite party jobs, is experimenting with its creative side after being criticised by President Xi Jinping for being “too aristocratic”.
The youth league’s central committee this week released two music videos – an English rap song and an adapted version of a Chinese hit – that employ Xi’s signature slogan “the Chinese Dream” and celebrate today’s 95th anniversary of the Communist Party. The releases follow pledges of deep reform by youth league chief Qin Yizhi.
The attempt to engage more people – regardless of the controversies it may spark – is aimed at proving the youth league is still “useful” to both the leadership and the public, and that it retains its political power ahead of a major personnel reshuffle, according to one party historian.
The youth league is promoting the English-language rap This is China on YouTube and Facebook. It says the rap is produced by young people born in the 1990s and is popular among Chinese youths as it reflects a “neutral” view of China – rather than the contradictions inherent in Western criticisms of the country.
The song’s lyrics include most of the rhetoric popular in mainland media, such as how the country, rich in culture and history, has been rebuilt after the two world wars; how its growth comes with social problems such as pollution, corruption, and social injustice; and how China has made headway in developing new technology. The lyrics also include the assertion that people only want their “Chinese Dream” to come true.
The rapper also sneers at criticisms of China that come from “the spies, the traitors, the liars and the money-making jerks”. He stages a veiled attack on America’s gun problem and boasts that because of China’s gun controls, “we don’t fear gun slaughter”.
The rap reminds the audience that “Taiwan and the mainland are from one family, the same”.
The second song, a girly Chinese pop tune, is promoted by the youth league as “the cutest ever red song”, which portrays the party as a sweet young man who “treats me dearly without asking for any returns”.
It is adapted from a love song by Malaysian singer Fish Leong, who was publicly praised by Xi on his visit to Kuala Lumpur in 2013.
The video features cartoon rabbits while the song’s lyrics refer to the party as “you”, with a line that says “you are much more important than myself” and “we have made a pledge to stay together till we are very old”.
Party historian Zhang Lifan said the youth league was “doing whatever it could” to prove it was still “useful” to the country’s political system, as more and more officials from the “League faction” found themselves the target of Xi’s corruption campaign or removed from senior positions in personnel reshuffles.
“Of course they’re trying the new media techniques to appeal to more people, but the ultimate goal is to avoid becoming completely irrelevant,” Zhang said.
