Is the Chinese government feeling nostalgic for the 1960s, the glory days of Communist Party sloganeering and dominance? First, it emerged that Foreign Minister Wang Yi (and soon other top Chinese officials) was eschewing a foreign-made luxury car for a domestically produced Red Flag sedan, which used to be the ride of choice for Communist bigwigs. Then China’s leader Xi Jinping announced a new “party rectification” campaign against official corruption and abuse of power. The drive will be promoted by an online landing page called Mass Line Net, a term popularized by Chairman Mao Zedong that refers to the Chinese Communist Party’s need to connect with those it governs…

Xi’s year-long party rectification drive, announced by teleconference on June 18 to clutches of serious-looking Communist Party cadres, is ambitious. He is ordering a “‘thorough cleanup’ of undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance,” according to state newswire Xinhua. These four –isms have been grouped together by China’s party thinkers as the “Four Forms of Decadence.” Xi was quoted saying that members of the Chinese Communist Party should instead be striving toward four goals: self-purification, self-perfection, self-renewal and self-progression.