China has turned to rap videos to try and impress the world.
The communist nation recently released a new rap video titled “Two Sessions: To the World from China,” touting its achievements in science, technology, education, the environment and “poverty alleviation.”
The state media-produced video marks the country’s annual meeting of Parliament, referred to as the Two Sessions meeting, with the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the country’s top political advisors under President Xi Jinping.
Watch the 2-minute video here:
INCREDIBLE new state media rap on the Two Sessions: https://t.co/aN0LYGtMg5 pic.twitter.com/MJLkwGpYlS
— 𝕛𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤 𝕘𝕣𝕚𝕗𝕗𝕚𝕥𝕙𝕤 🇭🇰🏴 (@jgriffiths) March 4, 2019
The song, performed by rapper Su Han, features bizarrely constructed phrases, including “joy of success is like a weekend car ride around the pool,” “for the fragrance we’re blessing to the world to show our affection” and “tramp the bygone session, we’re the fortitude presence.”
The song showcases China’s landing on the dark side of the moon, the Sunway TaihuLight Chinese supercomputer, the Micius space satellite, the Jiaolong deep-sea research submarine that can dive more than 7,000 meters, and cloned monkeys, among other things.
The video indicates that China is taking a trendier, more hip approach to its propaganda content. The fact that the song is performed in English also indicates that the content is intended for a greater audience outside China.
“Since Xi Jinping came to power, the Chinese propaganda system has been working more closely with advertisers and PR experts to create the kind of content that they hope will go viral online,” university lecturer Florian Schneider told the AFP.
China also released a second video this year as Two Sessions began, titled “Chinese Democracy in the eyes of an American.”
Watch the 5-minute video here:
“Over the past decades, the country has risen from shambles into the world’s second largest economy,” an assumably American narrator says as the video begins.
“It now has the world’s biggest middle-income population and it’s the largest contributor to global economic growth,” he says, as the phrases “new era” and “new China” subliminally flash across the screen.
China’s key to success is its “system of democracy,” he points out, but in the next sentence admits that “you might need an encyclopedia to understand” it.
The video then tries to explain how China’s democracy works.
China Xinhua News Network Corporation, an affiliate of China’s Xinhua News Agency, is state-owned and -operated, meaning it is fully funded by the Chinese communist government. The corporation was founded in 2009. China has released propaganda videos before in an effort to change how the west perceives the communist nation.
