Xi Jinping Uses Traditional Festivals to Boost Party Image
Xi Jinping is reviving traditional Chinese festivals to promote cultural confidence and link national identity with the Communist Party.
President Xi Jinping is utilizing the revival of traditional Chinese festivals to bolster the image of the Communist Party and promote Chinese cultural confidence. Holidays such as the Mid-Autumn Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day, and the Dragon-Boat Festival have been re-established as state-promoted fixtures of the calendar, despite having been previously dismissed as feudal superstitions and suppressed during the Cultural Revolution.
The government uses these events to link national identity with family values, positioning the party as the guarantor of Chineseness. While the state promotes these traditions to foster political unity, tensions persist between official state-controlled interpretations of culture and actual local practices, such as those seen in Zhangzhou, China.
This emphasis on Han-centric culture has created friction with ethnic minorities. In Xinjiang, Uyghurs have reportedly faced pressure to participate in traditions that contradict their beliefs, highlighting the risk of alienating non-Han populations in the pursuit of a unified national identity.
