A short video showing a popular Chinese state news anchor singing and making fun of Mao Zedong at a private dinner went viral on China’s Internet recently. The incident and its fallout showed at once the regime’s fragile grip on its founding leader’s tarnished legacy, and also how swift and harsh punishment can be for Party apostates who joke about the matter.
Mao is the founding leader of communist China. Though his political thought and legacy has long since been sullied (his fanatical political campaigns led to tens of millions of deaths), open criticism—especially from a member of the Party run media elite—is still heavily circumscribed.
The 76-second video shows Bi Fujian, the China Central Television anchor, with friends at a restaurant, singing songs from the propaganda opera “Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy.” One of the other dinner guests kept a beat with chopsticks on the table. Between verses, Bi interjects sarcastic comments about the Chinese communist movement, as well as its former leader.
