Patriotic Education Campaign
[4][5] The academic Suisheng Zhao has said the Campaign is part of a strategy to make the Party the "paramount patriotic force and guardian of national pride.
"[6] According to the 1994 "Outline", patriotism education focuses on young people and takes socialism with Chinese characteristics and the party's basic line as the guide.
[11][18] Ultimately, the Patriotic Education Campaign was one of the Communist Party's key initiatives emerging from the 1990 National Morality Conference.
[19] The Conference and Campaign both reflected a view that failures of moral education had allowed the emergence of the Student Movement which had culminated in the Tiananmen protests.
[12] The Patriotic Education Campaign was commenced following a period of relative political stability in the post-Tiananmen years and Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour of 1992.
[12] Following the legitimacy crisis suffered by the CCP in 1989, the Patriotic Education Campaign was instituted to reorient the party's ideological position and foster a new wave of Chinese Nationalism.
[11] The new nationalism of the campaign was proffered in direct opposition to Marxism–Leninism which had been the guiding ideology of the Mao era, and was now largely considered outmoded by party elites.
[11] The change was operationalised through measures such as directives requiring the People's Daily, the official media outlet of the CCP, to increase use of patriotic rhetoric.
[23] The CCP sought to create a favourable social environment for the PEC and promoted its ideals through all available propaganda streams including books, magazines, newspapers, television and radio programs, film, visual art and mass rallies.
[18] The sites were intended to visualise national myths which reframed collective memory as a tool to glorify the status quo and denounce enemies of the CCP.
[14] Sites were designed to cover a diverse range of historical memories, addressing popular topics of Chinese history.
A story of Chinese national development characterised by an unceasing striving for self-improvement and struggle against foreign aggression was promoted as the CCP sought to transform the ideological basis of its rule's legitimacy from Communism to Patriotism.
[25] The PEC broke from Marxist tradition; fostering revivals in Confucianism and Chinese traditional cultural activities, celebrating symbols of Chinese national unity and achievement like the Yellow Emperor and the Great Wall, and replacing portraits of Marx and Engels in Tiananmen Square on national day celebrations with a lone portrait of non-Communist, Chinese Nationalist Sun Yat-sen.[11] This theme of the PEC was designed to portray the CPP's patriotism throughout China's long struggle for national independence and prosperity, rather than its Communist ideals, as the basis for its political legitimacy.
[18] The PEC also emphasised the theme of territorial integrity and national unity, as the CCP sought to foster nationalist resentment towards foreign pressures.
[11] Compared to previous educational campaigns launched by the CCP, particularly those in Maoist years, the PEC of the 1990s was implemented with greater pragmatism and sophistication.
[32] During the Maoist years, Chinese education campaigns had largely failed to build support for the government and were often considered to be without substance.
[22] Such widespread support for the Communist Party, or at least unwillingness to criticise its actions, is considered evidence that the Patriotic Education Campaign has served its purpose.
[34]: 99–100 International historiographical thought tends to posit the Patriotic Education Campaign as the most recent attempt of the CCP's to inculcate the Chinese populace with a belief in the party's supremacy.
