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Topic: Chinese Culture Doesn’t Belong to the Chinese Government

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Chinese Culture Doesn’t Belong to the Chinese Government
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Growing up in California, one of my favorite books featured the adventures of Sun Wukong, the mischievous monkey from the 16th-century Chinese tale “Journey to the West.” I loved his bright eyes and wild capers, and he and his motley band of adventurers felt like close childhood companions.To get more chinese culture news, you can visit shine news official website.

So it was especially jarring to see his name invoked in a recent Chinese propaganda video. Over a fast-paced montage that mixed undulating flags with clips of satellites and other symbols of Chinese development, a rapper touted the Communist Party’s accomplishments, from supercomputers to alleviating poverty, and intoned in English: “Monkey King to the West, legendary dragon to the sky, y’all know it’s time for Chinese miracle.”

My heart sank. Since I’d moved to Beijing in 2014 as a Wall Street Journal correspondent, I’d seen Xi Jinping’s regime regularly invoke Chinese culture to bolster its rule, touting the nation’s “great civilization” and the party’s efforts to preserve and uphold it. But it felt especially sad to see a beloved childhood icon enlisted in the effort, too.

What does it mean to love a culture, and take pride in it, but not the government that serves as its most prominent booster? For members of the Chinese diaspora, such questions can be tricky, and all the more so in a time of mounting global distrust of China and its leaders. A recent Pew poll of 14 countries, for example, found record high unfavorable views of China, with a median 78% of respondents saying they didn’t trust Mr. Xi to do the right thing regarding world matters.



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