A Chinese city is attempting to force its 8 million residents to memorize and recite a series of “socialist values,” state-media reported yesterday, with spot-checks to ensure conformity.
The central Chinese city of Wuhan is calling on “all residents to internalize” 12 “core socialist values,” which are part of an ideological campaign by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a report in the Global Times said.
The city is set to hold “mandatory recitation sessions,” the report said, with students told that “officials from central government” would check up on them.
“We held a class meeting to check if we could remember [the core socialist values],” a graduate student at a local university told the newspaper. “No one could leave until we could recite them all.”
“If anyone failed to recite them when the school checked, they would lose their scholarship for next year,” another student said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has pushed the “socialist values” campaign since taking office last year, in an attempt to shore-up support for the communist party.
VALUES
The values include “wealth and power,” “patriotism,” and “harmony,” as well as some terms which the communist party defines differently from the West, such as “democracy,” and “rule of law.”
Despite the mandatory campaign, the values also include “freedom.”
China has relaxed controls on ideology since the excesses of the former Mao Zedong (毛澤東) era, but government officials regularly say that “Western” liberalism is inappropriate for China.
All Chinese students up to postgraduate level are already required to attend political classes which require them to memorize communist party ideology.
At one recent recitation meeting involving Wuhan city officials, monile phone signals were blocked, apparently to prevent distractions as the values were read out, the Global Times said, citing a local newspaper.
CIVILIZED CITY
It added that the campaign is part of an attempt by city officials to bid for the title of “national civilized city.”
The Communist Party’s Central Civilization Office started the campaign last month, with 95 cities evaluated on criteria including their “moral environments,” it said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS