{"id":4775,"date":"2015-02-23T20:13:25","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T01:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=4775"},"modified":"2015-03-04T21:10:18","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T02:10:18","slug":"xi-jinping-the-star-in-chinas-lunar-new-year-tv-gala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/xi-jinping-the-star-in-chinas-lunar-new-year-tv-gala","title":{"rendered":"Xi Jinping the Star in China\u2019s Lunar New Year TV Gala"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BN-HA489_chunwa_G_20150219063337\"<\/a>7:47 pm HKT Feb 19, 2015<\/p>\n

A screenshot shows the performance of \u201cI Give My Heart to You\u201d during this year\u2019s China Central Television Spring Festival gala.<\/p>\n

With the Lunar New Year drawing near, China\u2019s state broadcaster used one of its most tightly managed and overtly political Spring Festival galas in recent memory to deliver a message to the country\u2019s 1.3 billion people on behalf of the Communist Party: Our hearts are yours.<\/p>\n

A four-hour jumble of songs, skits, lavish costumes and gravity-defying hair-dos piped into living rooms across China every Lunar New Year\u2019s eve, China Central Television\u2019s Spring Festival gala is one of the world\u2019s most-watched broadcasts. The show \u2013 equal parts entertainment and propaganda \u2013 reached more than 700 million viewers in 2014, according to CCTV, in what was considered a down year.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t immediately clear how many tuned into Wednesday night\u2019s broadcast.<\/p>\n

Even if many viewers only keep it on in the background as they eat dinner or play cards, such a large audience makes the show an irresistible vehicle for the delivery of political messages. The proportion of political content has waxed and waned over the years, but with Chinese President Xi Jinping eager to tighten the Communist Party\u2019s grip on public discourse, the messages this year were clear.<\/p>\n

For the first time, the gala featured a host from the majority Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, Negmat Rahman, whose appearance helped reinforce a message of ethnic unity following a year of escalating violence in the Uighur homeland of Xinjiang. A number of skits and songs addressed the lives of the ordinary people, who were also featured prominently in the studio audience, recalling Mr. Xi\u2019s \u201cmass line\u201d campaign urging officials to better understand regular folk.<\/p>\n

The gala was also notable for featuring a pair of comedy routines dealing with corruption \u2013 an unusually sensitive topic for the show, but one that dovetails with Mr. Xi\u2019s wide-ranging anti-corruption drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome irony or scoffing at corruption cases in an innocuous way would resonate with the public,\u201d the state-run China Daily newspaper quoted Peking University political scientist Yan Jirong as saying.
\nFor detail please visit here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7:47 pm HKT Feb 19, 2015 A screenshot sh … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[1171,103],"views":4471,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4777,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4775\/revisions\/4777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}