‘Red culture’ adapts to new audiences ahead of 70th anniversary

SHANGHAI: Dressed in a blood-stained Chinese army uniform and a cap with a red star in the centre, Wang Huaifu and his comrades gesture with guns in front of a row of soldiers triumphantly waving torn scarlet flags.

Wang is the lead actor in the patriotic “Battle of Shanghai” acrobatics show, a visual recreation of 1949 battles between the Communists and the Nationalists for control of Shanghai.

“Today´s China and Shanghai did not come to be as it is easily. It was fought for,” said 35-year-old Wang, who stars as a commander. From movie screens to theatre stages, China´s entertainment industry has turned red ahead of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People´s Republic of China (PRC) on Tuesday.

China´s film sector wields huge power and is expected to become the largest cinema market in the world by 2020 with strong box office growth and rising ticket prices, according to consultancy PwC.

Ever since it seized power in 1949, the ruling party has used media and entertainment as propaganda tools to spread patriotism which is rooted in the core of communism ideologies. But experts say patriotic entertainment has had to adapt to appeal to China´s urbanised and cosmopolitan young adults who have become huge fans of Hollywood blockbusters.

“We are not trying to proceed with the spoon-feeding, rigid type of education,” said Dong Zhengzhen, scriptwriter of “Battle of Shanghai”. “We should let the young people feel and consciously absorb through the charm of art itself.”

The historical drama “My People, My Country” — based on seven memorial moments since 1949 — draws on “narrative and production techniques more commonly associated with Hollywood”, said Nicole Talmacs, China cinema scholar at Xi´an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

The film “downplays the stiff didactic approaches to ´history telling´ that previous anniversary films have resorted to,” Talmacs said.

The historical drama will roll out in almost 40 countries including the US, Canada and Australia the day after its debut in China — partly due to Chinese media moguls´ aggressive acquisition of cinema chains worldwide. “Chinese patriotism is no longer a localised affair,” said Talmacs.

While China´s entertainment industry tries to appeal to wider audiences, censors have recently whittled out and replaced shows with those that push the Communist cause. In July the National Radio and Television Administration´s development research centre released a list of 86 TV programmes that “eulogise the motherland, the people and the heroes” for TV stations to play during the key political year.

It also banned costume serials and dramas that have “strong entertainment elements” during the run-up to the anniversary. Costume dramas — such as the hugely popular series “Story of Yanxi Palace”, which drew 18 billion views — used to be abundant in China but are frowned on by the authorities for celebrating a lavish, scheming lifestyle under empirical rule.