Foreign Affairs

Chinese Game Show Deepens Cult of Personality Surrounding Leader

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There is a new game show in China and the subject of its questions will be about the president and “Core Leader” of China himself, Xi Jinping.

Contestants on “Studying Xi in the New Era,” will not win anything but will be judged by a panel of professors of Marxist dogma. Questions reportedly range from Xi’s early life, his interests, and the meaning of his speeches, to his place among other historically significant Communist leaders of China. The new show is actually the second season in the series “Socialism is Kind of Cool.”

Xi is the most powerful leader in Chinese history since Mao Zedong, who died in 1976, and like Mao, he will also be the only leader since with the opportunity to be “leader for life.” First showings of the game show feature cartoons of Karl Marx, flashy futuristic graphics, and references to Xi as “infinitely powerful.”

The show was created by Hunnan provincial party officials after a call from Xi for “a thorough study session among the whole party.”

Professor Jane Duckett of the University of Glasgow told The Times the show is “to situate Xi and his ideas in historical Marxist context.”

Amid global controversies over brinkmanship in the South China Sea and internment in China’s Muslim dominant regions in the West, there has been much propaganda in the country. Studying Xi in the New Era, a play on words that when translated into chinese could also mean “Study Session in the New Era” according to Quartz, airs immediately after another new show entitled, “Marx Got It Right.”

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