China’s Patriotic Education: Schooling or Indoctrination?

To cultivate loyal and submissive followers, CCP institutes “red patriotism” courses venerating China’s revolutionary past for children in kindergartens

Students read in their classroom in the Yang Dezhi "Red Army" elementary school in Wenshui, Xishui County in Guizhou Province, China on Nov. 7, 2016. In 2008, Yang Dezhi was designated a "Red Army primary school"—funded by China's "red nobility" of revolution-era Communist commanders and their families, one of many such institutions that have been established across the country. Such schools are an extreme example of the "patriotic education" which China's ruling Communist party promotes to boost its legitimacy—but which critics condemn as little more than brainwashing. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images

Reproduced from Bitter Winter: A magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China

After the Tiananmen Square protests 30 years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a patriotic education campaign nationwide to instill national pride and build a generation of future communists loyal to the country’s leadership. Amid pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, China’s communist regime is accelerating the campaign to impart nationalist fervor through indoctrination, starting from a very young age.

Toddlers Swear Allegiance to the Party

“No matter where I was born, the blood of my motherland is always flowing inside me. No matter if I am alive or dead, this will never change. For all this, I commit to love my motherland,” toddlers were following their teacher swearing an oath to China and its leadership. The pledge was organized during a flag-raising ceremony in a kindergarten in Yongxiu County under the jurisdiction of Jiujiang City in the southwestern province of Jiangxi on Sept. 25.

The school is organizing activities like these, hoping to instill in children nationalist pride and loyalty to the country and the Communist Party.