The Heirs of Stalin

Gary Farber's home blog is Amygdala.

They've taken different directions, ostensibly -- and truly, in some ways, to be sure -- away from their heritage, but how far have they truly yet gone? Perhaps far, and perhaps not far enough.

In capitalistic neo-communist China:

Fight The Paper Tiger! Raise High The Banner of... MTV?

Communist Party nostalgia meets Chinese teenagers.

When fathers of the Chinese Communist Party mapped out the road to socialist perfection, they didn't give much thought to green hair.

But amid growing concern that it is losing touch with an increasingly rebellious youth, the government recently announced a series of steps to bolster social, ethical and moral standards among underage Chinese.

"What they're really afraid of is not political dissidents. It's long hair, decadence, punks and hip-hop. That's raising more concern than anything else," said Hung Huang, publisher of the Chinese edition of Seventeen magazine. "In essence, China is experiencing its first real generation gap, and it's a 7 on the Richter scale."

Premier Wen Jiabao set the tone in late February with State Council Document #8 — cited as the most important statement on youth since the Communists swept to power in 1949 — calling on parents, teachers and the government to help strengthen and reform the virtue of Chinese minors.

The government has also banned the release of new foreign films during the school break this summer and tightened restrictions on foreign textbooks, cellphone text messaging, the Internet and racy magazines aimed at teens. It is recruiting new "upstanding youth" to serve as role models. And it is pouring money into "Youth Palaces," the national network of after-school community centers started in the 1950s to promote extracurricular activities.

Because who doesn't love a good Youth Palace? And communism! It's so k00!

[...]

Particularly vexing for senior party and government officials, analysts and party insiders say, is the limited traction that slogans and morality campaigns may have with a generation weaned on MTV and online games.

"The party is trying to do a little updating and repackaging," said Victor Yuan, chairman of Horizon, a market research firm that works for the government and private companies. "But compared to campaigns by professional ad people, they still fall short. Most young people would rather watch videos."

Young Chinese continue to join the Communist Party — though exact figures are unavailable, reports say the trend is up — but party stalwarts fret that they are embracing the red banner for the wrong reasons. Instead of identifying with party ideology, surveys suggest, many youngsters view the party as a networking opportunity, a sort of high-octane Rotary Club.

"I'm not interested in joining now but might consider it later," said Wu Yue, 22, a recent Beijing college graduate who is trying to break into television. "For a lot of young people, it's not an issue of believing in communism but getting good jobs, promotions and better pay, especially if you're in a political environment like government or the media."

At Vics, a trendy club in the shadow of Beijing's Worker Stadium, the focus is on parties of a different sort. At 10:30 on a weeknight, things start to hop as young Chinese amble past the faux Egyptian mummy, down the chrome stairs and onto the red luminescent dance floor to the thumping sound of rap and hip-hop. Some won't head home before 5 in the morning.

Between a Maoist Youth Palace, and the faux Egyptian mummy with hip-hop, the latter wins almost every time.

"I come here a few times a week for the music and the atmosphere," Chao Xu, a 22-year-old student, said at a table crowded with whisky bottles, soft drinks and cigarette butts. "There's concern about morality these days, but it's not a problem with any of my friends."

Not after enough whisky, anyway.

That hasn't stopped the government from trying to create a "purified" living environment for teenagers and young adults in concerts and dance halls across the country. The Culture Ministry early last month approved Britney Spears' first China tour, provided she doesn't reveal too much.

"Relevant departments will carry out strict reviews of Britney Spears' performance clothing," a state-run news agency said. The report followed the banning of Hong Kong pop diva Faye Wong's song "In the Name of Love" because the lyrics include the word "opium."

In May, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and local affiliates issued guidelines calling on TV anchors to stop dying their hair strange colors, wearing bizarre clothes, showing too much skin, using Hong Kong or Taiwan accents, displaying their navels or cleavage, and wearing plunging necklines or short skirts.

The guidelines also include calls to reduce sex and violence in prime-time programming as part of a broader "clean the screen" campaign.

Zhao Mengxin, an anchorwoman on several provincial CCTV shows, applauds the policies, especially those regulating dress.

"Local television is particularly bad, with anchors wearing vulgar, mismatched clothes that look like they grabbed them from the gutter," she said. "Being elegant is always in style, especially when young people are watching."

The crackdown on suggestive clothing may pale beside the task of reducing media violence. China, famous for its martial arts films, has a high cultural tolerance for violence, said Miao Di, a film and television professor with the Beijing Broadcasting Institute.

Several years ago, an American civic group approached Miao's school, voicing concern that violent Hollywood exports were tarnishing young Chinese people's minds.

"None of the Chinese thought the American shows were violent compared to our own homegrown programs," he said. "The Chinese people have always been very sensitive about sexuality but not that worried about violence."

Authorities are also trying to control young people's use of the Internet after a series of high-profile abuses, experts say.

"We're trying to enhance our influence over young people and promote traditional culture," said Cao Xuecheng, vice chief of the propaganda department of the China Communist Youth League.

This year, a video-game addict dropped dead, reportedly from stress and exhaustion, after playing "Legend of Mir II" for 20 hours in an Internet cafe in Chengdu. About the same time, two secondary school students in Chongqing were killed by a train when they fell asleep on railroad tracks after two days online.

In response, Beijing announced last month that it had shuttered 16,000 Internet cafes as part of a campaign to protect the nation's children and adolescents from corrosive influences — and, human rights activists say, to keep a tighter grip on free expression.

Non-regulated Internet cafes hurt the "mental health" of teenagers and interfere with their schoolwork, Culture Minister Sun Jiazheng said this year.

But there are plenty of loopholes. Ding Zheng, a Beijing high school student, stood in front of an Internet cafe on Beijing's Dong Street. "This is a joke," he said, pointing at a sign barring minors from entering. "They'll never stop you unless a policeman happens to be standing right here. My parents don't like me coming, but I just make up some excuse about heavy traffic and they never know."

Whaddya rebelling against, kid? Little Red Books! I mean, whaddaya got?

Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5.

Yet, the attempted repression continues:

Because You Just Can't Be Too Totalitarian

Ah, the wings of freedom continue to spread in China.

China is expanding its censorship controls to cover text messages sent using mobile phones.

New regulations have been issued to allow mobile phone service providers to police and filter messages for pornographic or fraudulent content.

But analysts fear the real targets are political dissidents.

China's authorities are gradually tightening control over the spread of electronic information, particularly on the internet.

A Paris-based group, Reporters Without Borders, says the Chinese authorities are increasingly using new technology to control information.

It says one Chinese company marketing a system to monitor mobile phone text messages has announced it is watching for "false political rumours" and "reactionary remarks".

Venus Info Tech Ltd said in a press release that its surveillance system worked by filtering algorithms based on key words and combinations of key words.

Certain key words could trigger an automatic alert to the police.

[...]

Last year, Chinese people sent more than 220bn text messages, more than half of all messages sent in the world, according to China's Xinhua news agency.

The authorities are quite correct, of course, that these technologies are highly dangerous to them. But how long and well will they be able to bottle up computer communication?

Read The Rest Scale: 1 out of 5.

In post-communist Russia:

The Bolshevik Czar

Putin's new symbolism.

The Kremlin has reintroduced one of tsarist Russia's most elaborate and elitist traditions - the imperial races.

At the weekend, President Vladimir Putin for the first time invited his regional governors and heads of former Soviet states to race for the Prize of the President of Russia, just as the tsar invited his subjects to offer horses to race for the Prize of the Emperor, which was last staged for Nicholas II in 1916.

Twelve horses at the Hippodrome stadium in Moscow raced over the largely symbolic distance of 200 metres for the prize of 3m roubles (£56,000), the Interfax news agency said.

In the crowds were well-connected Russians able to afford the 20,000-rouble tickets, as well as senior Kremlin officials, including Mr Putin.

They were joined by the heads of state over whom the Kremlin, apparently nostalgic over its Soviet-era status as a world power, again wants to extend its influence.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliev cheered on his horse, Sweet Mistress, while Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, backed his thoroughbred, nicknamed Grantled, according to the Russian media.

Halatenango, a horse from Chechnya, reportedly entertained crowds by refusing to get into the starting gates. The presidents of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia also entered.

The dignatories watched from a "special guest tribune" where an informal summit for the heads of state was held.

Women wore hats and men morning suits, according to the strict dress code, with the leaders placing bets.

As root-and-trunk former KGB man Putin continues to centralize power in Russia in himself, increase his control over information, further his personality cult, eliminate all other loci of power, from industrialists to regional governors, and marginalize democrats into non-existence, he increasingly uses the symbols of the past. What does this one tell us about the new Caesar (Tsar)? (The man whose heart President Bush has "looked into" and found to be "good.")

Read The Rest Scale: 1 out of 5.

And to close, an anecdote of the post-cold-war Russia, from Technical Sgt. "John Stryker," posted originally to Amygdala:

Big Rooshin Plane, Not American Poosy

A first for Amygdala: a guest post. Taken from a personal e-mail, utterly casually knocked off, and with permission, from newly promoted (congratulations!) Technical Sergeant "John Stryker":

That reminds me of a Russian flight crew that I bumped into during Restore Hope. They hadn't been paid since the Soviet Union fell apart, so they'd been freelancing and living on their plane for about six months.

I blocked their plane in, and it looked rough. It was dirty, there were panels missing and the tires looked like they were on their last layer of cord.

Whoops, gotta read the rest here. :-)