Xi Jinping plays social engineer

AS A SHOW of a political party’s social power, a mass wedding is hard to beat. There was a strut in the step of the propaganda chief of Ningdu county, in the orange-growing hills of Jiangxi province, as he welcomed 66 couples to a collective marriage ceremony on February 17th. Though the men and women were all dressed in traditional red wedding robes, this was a Communist Party gathering. It began with expressions of respect for Xi Jinping, the supreme leader. Standing in Ningdu’s main square, watched by their families and a throng of curious locals, the couples read a wedding oath from a large video screen. They pledged to love one another, to care for their respective parents, to educate their children and to heed the call of the party and government to build a contented, civilised China. The term civilised is a clue. The couples were not just enjoying a free party. They were now recruits in a nationwide ideological campaign, intended to stamp out “unhealthy” traditions and carry “socialist spiritual civilisation” into every home, especially those in rural areas.

Bad habits targeted by the campaign vary from place to place, but its stated goal is the same everywhere: to solve real-life problems so that “the masses personally feel that the Communist Party is good”. A banner on stage spelled out the mission of Ningdu’s collective wedding. It read: “No to bride prices, yes to happiness”.