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Xi Jinping Lauds Chinese Culture in Unusually Bare Terms

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Larry Ong  |  Epoch Times

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (Xinhua)

Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party love to talk up a “New China.” Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) actually compelled the Chinese people to abandon 5,000 years worth of traditions and customs. Revolutionary songs and folk theater violently replaced classical poetry and dance.

The Chinese regime’s fifth leader, however, has recently gone off script by praising Chinese culture in almost reverential tones.

Speaking to over 3,000 Chinese literary types and the full Politburo Standing Committee on Nov. 30 in Beijing, Xi Jinping said to look towards traditional Chinese culture to usher in a “great cultural renaissance” for the Chinese people.

“The Chinese people’s ability to progress endlessly and continually recover from setbacks is inevitably linked to the powerful support of Chinese culture,” said Xi. “Chinese culture’s unmatched philosophy, wisdom, presence, and grace strengthens the innermost confidence and pride of Chinese citizens and the Chinese people.”

Those engaged in literary works have to “diligently pursue authentic scholarship, good morality and conduct, and high-level aesthetics,” he said.

Xi also demonstrated his own knowledge of Chinese culture by sprinkling his speech with classical maxims like “the pen of literati encourages compassion and punishes evil”—views that seem out of sorts to be uttered by the leader of a regime that has been severely violating human rights for over 60 years.  

Of course, Xi’s over 9,500 character-long speech contains the obligatory references to “socialism” and the Party’s role in “guiding” cultural developments in China. Indeed, his speech can in some ways be seen as a continuation of a long-term Communist Party project to legitimize the regime by linking it to pre-communist ideas and traditions.

Nevertheless, the frankness of Xi’s praise for traditional culture, and some of the specific wording he used, appears to be “a break from the framework of the Chinese Communist Party,” according to Li Tianxiao, an independent political commentator.

While the atheist Party had previously appropriated some techniques like calligraphy or folk dance, it has “always rejected the divinely-inspired side of traditional Chinese culture,” Li said. “Xi’s acknowledgement of Chinese culture’s grace is a rejection of the Communist Party’s definition of culture.”

Li added that Xi Jinping’s choice of Chinese characters for “grace”—”shen yun”—is significant because he “couldn’t possibly not know, or have not heard of, Shen Yun Performing Arts in the United States.”

Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts is a classical Chinese dance company that has as its mission the revival of China’s 5,000 year civilization, according to the Shen Yun website. For the past decade, Shen Yun has played in hundreds of cities, often in landmark theaters, and has received glowing praise from celebrities and dignitaries worldwide.

This November, Fei Tian College, the institution where Shen Yun dancers learn their technique, was authorized to offer a Masters program in classical Chinese dance, the only institution of higher education in the United States to do so.

The Chinese regime has thus far prevented Shen Yun from performing in China and has harassed the company’s performances overseas because it regularly includes in its programs acts that dramatize the persecution of the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong, a persecution ordered by former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin. The Xi Jinping leadership appears to be distancing itself from Jiang’s political campaign.

Li Tianxiao, the political commentator, thinks that Xi Jinping’s choice of words in his speech is a timely “signal of affirmation” for Shen Yun Performing Arts. In November, the Hong Kong branch of New Tang Dynasty Television, the sister media of this newspaper, encouraged the government of semi-autonomous Hong Kong to invite Shen Yun to the city for the 2017 season.

Xi Jinping’s Nov. 30 speech is consistent with his views and actions on traditional Chinese culture that he has adopted since taking office in 2012.

In 2013, Xi visited the historic Confucius Temple in Qufu, eastern China, and is known to quote the teachings of the renowned Eastern philosopher in numerous speeches.

The Party’s internal disciplinary police, which runs Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, frequently draws on stories of battling corruption in ancient China to drive home lessons and draw parallels to the present day.

In mid-October, Xi cited the works on Chinese Song Dynasty general and patriot Yue Fei as his favorite in a publicized reading list. At the end of the month, an official from Shanghai gave an interview to Epoch Times, and spoke about Xi’s “reverential appreciation and concentrated study” of China’s 5,000 year-old

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