Mao introduced in China a style of governance called “Collective presidency”. This requires that the importance of individual leaders be magnified, empowering a single central figure to, it is said, contribute to the stability and strength of the joint plan. And for a few years, Xi Jinping and his government team have turned to this mission using all the new tools available at their fingertips.
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Call him Xi Dada (“Uncle Xi”), as it has been called for some time in the press, the propaganda spaces and also by the citizens themselves. There are traditional merchandising, decorative plates or T-shirts, for example, but not only that. According to People’s Daily there is at least one series known as “How to make a leader” in which children learn the official story of their leader, a narrative that fosters the idea that the once modest deputy Party Secretary made it to the top thanks to hard work and a bold vision of the future of the nation (the story is more complicated and you can read a good summary in this special). The saga also satirizes the American and British electoral systems, and it is said that this relaxed tone was one of the keys to its success with the general public, which made it viral.
The idea is to rejuvenate it, detach him from his cold appearance and make him friendly and charismatic for the young generations, even from a somewhat ironic and postmodern twist, as exemplified by the headstrong images with the face of the serene leader.
Propaganda before, propaganda today.
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Much of the propaganda in the form of animated videos that have reached the West was shared in 2015 and 2016, although they have existed from the moment he ascended to the presidency in 2013 and continue to this day as explained in this analysisIt is just that it is already so inserted in the daily news that Chinese Internet users are no longer surprised and the merchandise does not give way to our media. Nobody changes the gesture when they see that they have taken a mobile game about Xi.
And what videos are those? This is one of the most striking, in which Xi beats a tiger and five politicians, well-known party authorities who were publicly punished in a sobering way to show the internal fight against waste and corruption. Xi, by the way, was implicated in only some of these convictions, while others were carried out years before he came to power. At the end of this first episode of a series of three you can see how an international politician, Kissinger, “the best foreigner”, is venerated. The producer of these clips, which were also in charge of another very similar personal project, is Chaoyang Studio, a company otherwise with an empty resume.
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This other medium, also quite ghostly, presents us in anime mode the history of Kung Fu and the Chinese economy (untranslatable pun) that makes us want to implement the oriental model in our own finances.
You are not prepared for musical patriotism, among those who, out of a desire to abandon the old-fashioned traditional communist chants that young people no longer like, there are even some raps. “If you want to get married, marry someone like Xi Dada”, by Tang Jiayun, is the work of someone who does not identify himself as a member of the party, who also previously composed “Be a Man Like Xi Dada” and which has been widely disseminated in official media. According to the lyrics, Xi is “a man full of heroism with an unshakable spirit, and no matter how the world changes and how many difficulties lie ahead, he will insist and move on.”
The composer Song Zhigang wanted to do the same but looking at his wife, and he captured it in “Xi Dada ama a Peng Mama”. Zhang Jingchuan’s “Everybody Loves Xi Dada” had almost a million views in western media.
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Leaving the music we have the spots with an international look. “Who is Xi Dada?”, created by advertising companies that has been linked to Beijing, shows us foreign students completely enchanted by his figure, some even mentioning that Xi is “beautiful and super charismatic.” “The 13th What?”, which also features an affable and affectionate Xi, is a pop folk milestone that presents the success of the last five-year plan.
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In 2015 a study of state newspapers revealed that for his second anniversary as president of China, Xi had been mentioned in the media more than twice as many times as his predecessor at the same time, which makes one suspect that the effort to consolidate his figure is greater than decades ago.
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