The Lunar New Year is the perfect time to see family, eat dumplings,
and learn about Chinese propaganda. So buckle up,
because you’re never going to see the Lunar New Year the same way again.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
The Lunar New Year is just around the corner, and for many in China, that means…
A mad travel rush,
Eating lots of dumplings,
And fireworks … to scare away the bad spirits.
That is, unless you’re in a city that’s banned them, in which case…
…maybe you’ll just have to watch a drone show this year. Hmmmm, do you
think the spirits are equally scared of drones? I know I am.
But a lot of how Chinese celebrate the New Year today is about as rooted in tradition,
…as this Chang’e moon lander is … In the moon Goddess Chang’e.
Today we’re going to look at 5 ways the Communist Party has co-opted the holiday,
so that instead of celebrating Chinese traditions, you’re celebrating the Chinese Communist Party…
…starting with number 1: calling it “Chinese New Year.”
You’ve probably heard people say “Chinese New Year” to refer to the Lunar New Year.
While it’s not wrong to refer to China’s new year’s celebrations as the “Chinese
New Year,” the problem is, it gets used to refer to all Lunar New Year’s Celebrations,
even the ones that aren’t Chinese. The Chinese New Year is based on the
lunisolar calendar, which is why it’s more accurately called the “Lunar New Year” .
The Lunar New Year is celebrated all over Asia and is treated as
a public holiday in all these different countries.
Now, in some cases, their traditions may be similar to China’s.
For example, in China, children are given little red envelopes full of
money from the adults in their life. In South Korea, they do something similar,
but the envelopes aren’t necessarily red,and money can also come in little pouches, as well.
But similar or not, the tradition spreads way beyond China. Which
makes the Chinese New Year just about as Chinese as the South China Sea.
Sure, it’s in the name, but China doesn’t own it.
No matter how much it tries to say otherwise.
And it also doesn’t own the Lunar New Year’s holiday.
Which brings me to the next way China co-opts the holiday:
Number 2: Calling it the Spring Festival. For thousands of years, the New Year was
known as just that, the Lunar New Year. But after the communists came to power in 1949,
they started using the term “Spring Festival” to forcibly break it from tradition.
This was all part of Mao’s campaign to get rid of the Four Olds: old ideas,
old customs, old culture, and old habits . Which brings me to the next way the CCP has
subverted the holiday, Number 3:
…by pretending the CCP actually upholds Chinese traditions, when,
in fact, it’s really destroying them.
During the Cultural Revolution, which I will remind you aimed to *eliminate*
traditional Chinese culture, Mao suppressed the religious and spiritual aspects of the holiday.
“Red banners, which for 1,000 years had featured couplets about springtime and prosperity,
now had to have revolutionary slogans lauding Chairman Mao. Temple fairs vanished. . .
Teachers told students to reject traditional gifts of money in red packets from their parents,
because money had to be earned through the sweat of the brow.”
Communism: taking the joy and wonder out of, well, everything since 1848.
“the Communists even cracked down on lion and dragon dances, along with traditional greetings.”
Basically, the heart and soul of the holiday, things like worshiping
gods and honoring ancestors, you know those “feudal superstitions,” were all suppressed.
Now, a lot of that eased up after the end end of the Cultural Revolution,
and Lunar New Year is pretty well celebrated around China
—that is, unless you’re Tibetan or Uyghur.
But the party has never denounced Mao, and it’s still an atheist regime that has tried to quash
any and all belief in the divine. If you look at how the holiday used
to be celebrated, a lot of the 23 days of celebration were about the days that Goddess
Nü Wa created different aspects of the world. But in China today, that aspect has largely
been left out. And that’s in part because the only god the CCP wants people to worship
is the god of communism. Case in point: every year,
Chinese Central Television puts on a Spring Festival gala performance.
State media claim it’s the most-watched broadcast in the world and that it’s…
“a bridge that reconnects [overseas Chinese] with Chinese culture.”
But instead of just promoting Chinese culture – and definitely instead of
celebrating a traditional Chinese goddess – it features things like…
rock’n’roll with China’s ethnic minorities, a stirring celebration of the forceful fusion
between Chinese culture and modernity and other cultures and traditions within the
borders of China. See? The rock and roll song in a Chinese style and the Chinese language
is being sung by Mongolian nomad singers, so we’re totally honoring our ethnic minorities!
But that’s not all the gala contains!
There’s also the “Flowers and Songs Along the Belt and Road”
And the “bright lights of the Chinese dream.”
In case you didn’t get that last propaganda reference, the “Chinese dream” is Xi
Jinping’s pet phrase that refers to the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Basically,
the idea is that China has been downtrodden by foreign forces for the last century, but it’s
going to rise from the ashes and become a global leader thanks to the Chinese Communist Party.
But this propaganda is so bad, even the People’s Daily, which is Chinese *state-run* media,
admits “it's becoming a new tradition to browse social media platforms
like Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, to see how people mock the gala.”
Wow, that’s a pretty stunning admission from state media.
Is this some sort of reverse psychology to get
people to watch the show so at least someone sees their propaganda? “Hey,
come watch the show so you know what your friends are making fun of! It’ll be great!”
Or maybe it’s the whole idea of “even bad publicity is still publicity”?
A lot of people don’t really watch the show,
but still keep it on as background noise to enhance the lively atmosphere.
Ok, then, maybe it’s about pushing propaganda…through osmosis.
Whatever it is, the CCP definitely sees the New Year as a chance to promote the Party to
the people, but it’s also interested in using it as soft power around the world.
Which brings me to the next topic, right after the break.
Welcome back. The CCP has undermined the traditional Lunar New Year in China and
across the world by calling it the Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival instead
of the Lunar New Year and replacing Chinese traditions with new, state-sanctioned ones.
It also uses the Lunar New Year celebrations to project soft power across the globe by…
Number 4: co-opting overseas celebrations.
Now, in places with large Asian populations, like New York and San Francisco,
Lunar New Year’s celebrations are often put on by groups closely connected to the CCP.
And because of that, the CCP often influences how the New Year is celebrated — and specifically,
who’s allowed to be part of the celebration.
In 2006, the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce made headlines
by banning Falun Gong practitioners from being part of the Lunar New Year parade.
The spokesperson for the chamber, Rose Pak ,said
that it was because – quote – "We just don't want any groups that preach and do politics."
I’m guessing she’s referring to them talking about having their organs harvested by the CCP.
Yeah, if only they’d shut up already, we could just ignore the
CCP’s genocidal practices and enjoy our dumplings, thank you very much.
But there might have been a reason Pak didn’t want there to be any so-called “politics” involved.
“According to four former intelligence officials, there were widespread concerns that Pak had been
co-opted by Chinese intelligence, and was wielding influence over San
Francisco politics in ways purposefully beneficial to the Chinese government.”
Ah, so maybe it was more about *what* their politics
were rather than there being politics involved.
I guess that’s why Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was allowed to be in the parade that year.
This didn’t just happen in San Francisco, though.
“In recent years, Falun Gong has been excluded from lunar new year
parades in Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley in Southern
California by organizers who worried about damaging relations with China.”
Falun Gong has also been excluded from Washington, DC’s parade,
…and New York’s Manhattan Chinatown parade for a number of years.
Which again, just goes to show how much influence China has behind
the scenes in these overseas celebrations. And finally, one of the big ways the CCP has
changed the Lunar New Year… Is Number 5:
by making it all about the color red. You’ve probably seen images of the Lunar
New Year where red is the overwhelming theme of the decorations. There are red greeting cards,
red performers, red lanterns, red dragons, and a ton of other red decor.
Basically, the CCP heard someone say “paint the town red” and thought “OK, challenge accepted”.
Now I’m not saying that traditionally there was no red in the holiday.
You’ve probably seen these red scrolls with couplets written in gold letters
hanging outside Chinese people’s doors around this time of year.
The story behind these is that there was a beast named “nian,” which has the same
sound as “year” in mandarin. This beast would come out once a year and eat the villagers.
According to legend, the villagers figured
out that the beast was scared off by the color red and loud noises.
So they put red outside their doors and set off firecrackers to scare it away.
Later, that story turned into a tradition of setting
off firecrackers and putting red papers outside of doors.
So it’s not like red isn’t a part of the holiday at all.
But if you look at old paintings of Lunar New Year’s celebrations in China, red was not a
central color. There was definitely red in them, but it was more of an accent color than a main
color. And there were often variations of red—it wasn’t just the dark red that you see today.
The reason red has taken on so much significance for the Party is because it’s become symbolic of
the blood that was spilled to bring communism to China. In other words, it symbolizes revolution.
After the communists won the civil war in 1949,
they changed China’s flag from this blue dragon on a yellow background,
…to a red background with four little stars around a big star,
which was meant to signify four classes of people all united under the communist party .
It wasn’t just the flag that was red, though.
The youth that became Mao’s little army were called the Red Guards.
The communist bible during Mao’s time was known simply as the “little red book”.
And even today, when children join the Young Pioneers, a communist youth group,
they wear red scarves around their neck to symbolize their allegiance to the Party.
The Party has been working for over 70 years to make “red” synonymous with “China”.
And it’s also tried to make the CCP synonymous with Chinese culture,
which is why Chinese propaganda shows flags mixed in with Lunar New Year’s decorations.
Throughout China’s history, different dynasties had different colors associated with them. It’s
only since the Chinese Communist Party came to power that blood red has come to represent China.
So the next time you’re in Chinatown and you see red decorations all over,justremember—that’s
not all Chinese culture is. And that’s especially important for 2024,
the year of the dragon, because many people see the dragon as a symbol of ChinaIt is a dragon,
but it doesn’t have to be a red dragon . Now, I’ve got a video I’d like to show you.
But first, I’d like to give a shout out to the fans who support China Uncensored on Patreon.
You keep the lights on and the show going, and we couldn’t do this without your support.
If you want to be part of what I call the China Uncensored 50 cent army,
you can join for as little as a dollar per episode,
and you can even set a monthly limit. Head over to Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored.
As a thank you, I’ll answer your questions at the end of these episodes. Todays question
comes from Derek Johnson “Hey Chris, do you think the current fentanyl crisis in the US
is basically China mirroring what the British did to them with Opium during the Opium wars?”
Now that’s a very interesting question. Often it is talked about like that,
but to me, that veers a little too much into Communist propaganda for my taste.
China’s current drug war against the US is not at all like what they
British did to China during the Opium wars in the 19th century.
Both are horrible, but there are important differences.
The Qing dynasty that controlled China at the time
Limited foreign access to China,
restricting it to the southern port city Canton, what was called the Canton system.
Demand for Chinese goods was enormous, but China didn’t buy much from Europe. So there
were massive trade deficit between China and Britain. The British East India Company got
the idea to get people in China addicted to opium so they’d have something China wanted.
That obviously went terribly for the people in China as opium addiction became widespread.
The Qing Dynasty tried to stop the opium trade, that brought them into conflict with British
merchants, yada yada yada, opium war and the first unequal treaty. The century of humiliation.
Today, the Chinese Communist Party is using fentanyl not for economic reasons,
but specifically as drug warfare, an aspect of its larger strategy of unrestricted
warfare designed to destroy the United States, so the Chinese Communist Party
can take its place as the sole global superpower. That is a different beast.
Thanks for your question and your support Derek.
And as I mentioned in this episode, one of the things Communism does is try to destroy tradition,
especially people’s faith. That’s something really controversial to talk about on YouTube,
so to get around the censorship, I’m hiding that conversation in gaming content on my new
show Deep Thoughts While Gaming. Check out the latest about What Marx Got Wrong about
Religion according to the game Mass Effect. Let me know what you think, and click
on that orange button to join Derek in supporting China Uncensored on Patreon.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. See you next time.