Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri / AFP / Getty Images
China’s school children are next in line for a more intensive study of President Xi Jinping’s teachings ahead of the centennial celebration of the ruling Communist Party in July.
The party’s Central Committee on Wednesday issued new guidelines to boost ideological education among China’s Young Pioneers, a national youth organization with which the party is affiliated. The guidelines said all children in elementary school and the first two years of high school should have one class per week to conduct Young Pioneers activities, and the primary training material for the teaching staff should be Xi.
Members of the Young Pioneers should be taught to “keep the teachings of Xi in mind” and “do as Xi has instructed,” the guidelines say.
In China, everyone from diplomats to executives to sci-fi writers is under pressure to incorporate the broad, often vague tenets of ‘Xi Thought’ into their policies, as part of an effort to elevate it alongside Maoism and the president’s efforts to help further consolidate. cement control.
Read More: Rise of ‘Xi Thought’ Shows Long Future for One-Man Government in China
The document also urged children to learn that “today’s happy life ultimately comes from the right leadership of the party” and “from the superiority of our socialist system.”
Reinforcing “political enlightenment and building of values” among children is strategic in ensuring that the “red genes are passed down from generation to generation,” said party leader, the People’s Daily, on the front page Thursday, citing the guidelines.
Another state-sponsored newspaper, the China Daily, quoted the guidelines in one piece with the headline “Cultivation of Children Seen As Strategic.” The paper wrote that children are the future of the nation and the Communist Party, which had always made cultivating the land properly a “strategic” and “fundamental” task.
The role of the pioneers
The guidelines come when Xi visited a village in southwestern Guizhou province that state media said has successfully eradicated poverty. While posing for photos with people of the Miao ethnic minority dressed in traditional clothing, Xi sent greetings to all Chinese people ahead of the Lunar New Year, which falls on February 11 this year. The president also inspected cleaning work on a previously contaminated river.
The Chinese Young Pioneers was founded in 1949 and includes almost all children in China between the ages of six and fourteen. It has played an “irreplaceable role” in guiding generations of children to follow the party’s instructions, according to the guidelines.
While it was unclear what the current membership was, data from 2007 put the number at about 130 million.
The guidelines also called for the promotion of exchanges between Young Pioneers in the mainland and children’s organizations in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, to strengthen the “national, ethnic and cultural identity” of young people in these areas.
– With the help of Colum Murphy and Jing Li