The Chinese Communist Party celebrated “National Day” with a public rally for the first time since easing its repressive Wuhan coronavirus restrictions, packing 300,000 people into Tiananmen Square – the site of a bloody Communist atrocity against pro-democracy student demonstrators in 1989 – for ceremonies and political speeches.
National Day commemorates the founding of the People’s Republic of China, as declared by founder Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949. The Chinese government expanded the event into a week-long travel holiday in 1999, merging National Day with the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival to become one of three “Golden Week” festivals on the Chinese calendar.
According to the state-run Global Times, the 74th National Day brought heavy travel and a surge of holiday spending now that pandemic restrictions have been relaxed, overwhelming some popular tourist destinations:
On Sunday, the Dujiangyan Scenic Area in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province announced that the capacity of tourists to the attraction had reached 57,000, or 95 percent of its total by 11:40 am, and as a result it stopped online sales of tickets.
In addition, Hongyadong, a popular attraction in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality received a total of 110,000 travelers on Saturday, nearly double the amount of visitors to the area on Thursday, a day before the Golden Week, CCTV reported. It’s estimated that a total of 900,000 travelers will visit the area this Golden Week, according to the report.
The Palace Museum in Beijing had stopped selling tickets for Sunday by noon, with the attraction fully booked until October 6, according to the museum’s online ticket sales system.
The Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism predicted 896 million tourists would travel during the Golden Week, an increase of 86 percent over 2022 when travel restrictions were still in effect. The ministry predicted a 138 percent increase in tourism revenue.
Early on Sunday morning, amid the pleasant autumn breeze, some 302,000 people gathered at Tian’anmen Square in Beijing to witness the grand national flag-raising ceremony to mark the 74th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China https://t.co/BZXMBGja7D pic.twitter.com/gasIVibSww
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) October 1, 2023
At 6 am on Sunday morning bathed in the first rays of sunlight, more than 300,000 visitors who had waited for the whole night gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing just to witness the solemn moment when the five-star red flag was raised, on the occasion of the 74th birthday of… pic.twitter.com/BSAmWpqzXW
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) October 1, 2023
A flag-raising ceremony was held at Tiananmen Square on Oct. 1, National Day of the People’s Republic of China. May my motherland enjoy prosperity and my compatriots live in harmony!🇳 pic.twitter.com/HHt8gLffnq
— Zhang Heqing (@zhang_heqing) October 1, 2023
The Global Times touted a surge of box office revenue, proudly noting the top three films were all Chinese-made, including yet another propaganda film about the Korean War called The Volunteers: To the War. The Chinese Communist Party views the Korean War as a tremendous victory over the United States and takes no responsibility for unleashing the sadistic evil of the North Korean regime upon the human race.
The Global Times claimed travel and tourism revenue were boosted by “a number of measures to revive domestic tourism and further unleash consumption potential” announced at the beginning of the holiday week.
“The series of rules covers a wider range of areas including enhancing high-quality tourism products and services, expanding marine tourism products, optimizing tourism infrastructure investment, increasing international flights, offering convenience for inbound tourism and expanding financing channels for tourist enterprises,” the Global Times said, rather desperately trumpeting the same travel and holiday spending numbers it cited earlier to reinforce the impression that Friday’s stimulus measures worked perfectly (and instantly!) to produce “signs of growth” in the Chinese economy at last.
The Global Times reported visitors thronging Tiananmen Square at sunrise on National Day, many of them camped out from the previous night, hoping for “a good view of the flag-raising ceremony” and brimming with “passionate anticipation for the annual celebration of the birthday of their motherland.”
The Global Times burbled that camping out in Tiananmen Square to get good seats for the flag-raising ceremony “has become a popular way to mark China’s National Day for young people” and a special way to enjoy “the unique romance exclusively belonging to us Chinese.”
That would be the same Chinese youth cohort that is dropping out of the job market in record numbers and collecting “salaries” to perform household chores for their parents, because the Chinese Communist leadership has so dramatically failed to keep its promises to them.
Dictator Xi Jinping wrote a letter to schoolchildren on Thursday that is evidently meant to stand as his statement on National Day. The missive was as dour as most of Xi’s recent public statements, urging the kids to think of themselves as “martyrs” to the glory of Communism instead of complaining about broken promises and the lousy job market.
The Global Times summarized the letter on Saturday:
In the letter, which was issued ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day, Xi expressed his hopes for the students and extended his greetings to the family of the martyrs from the public security system.
Safeguarding national security and social stability as well as the people’s happiness and tranquility is the sacred duty of the people’s police, he said.
Encouraging students to follow the examples of their parents’ generation, Xi asked them to maintain firm ideals and convictions, work hard in their study and training, hone their skills, and dedicate themselves to serving as the loyal guardians of the Party and the people.
As the Global Times explained, the Chinese Communist Party uses the term “martyr” to describe fallen soldiers, police officers, and others who died for the State. In 2014, the rubber-stamp legislature declared an annual “Martyr’s Day” holiday on September 30, making it the ceremonial kickoff for the entire National Day Golden Week holiday.
Xi’s grim new tone was set in the spring when he told young people to “eat bitterness” to “create a better China” instead of complaining about sky-high unemployment.
Xi’s political message to restless Chinese youth includes frequent evocations of the older generation that suffered and died to build modern China, although he usually avoids mentioning that millions of them were deliberately starved and killed by their own government under Xi’s predecessor Mao. Young people reading Xi’s 2023 National Day message would do well to wonder if the current dictator, like Mao, might one day stop telling them to eat bitterness and start feeding it to them.