CNN has a story up today which reminds us just how much the Chinese Communist Party is governed by a cult of personality and always has been. In connection with the 100th anniversary of the CCP, there is a big campaign to spread what is officially called, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era.” The wordiness of that is significant and is something Xi Jinping is hoping to change as he moves to make himself an equal of Mao:

A central part of the campaign is focused on the promotion of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era,” the political doctrine of Xi which was written into the party’s constitution in 2017. Before Xi, only Chairman Mao Zedong (“Mao Zedong Thought”) and paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (“Deng Xiaoping Theory”) had their eponymous political philosophies enshrined in the party’s theoretical pantheon…

In a statement last week, the ministry said primary and high schools across the country would start using textbooks on “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era” in September. Last fall, dozens of universities — including top globally-ranked institutions like Peking University and Tsinghua University — launched introductory courses on it.

And last month, the party’s Central Committee approved seven new research centers on Xi’s ideology, adding to the 11 already established. These centers have been set up by top universities and think tanks, provincial governments, and central government ministries…

While the international media has long referred to Xi’s philosophy as simply “Xi Jinping Thought,” its official name has remained unchanged. Its official shortening would put Xi’s legacy on an equal rhetorical footing with Mao, who built a cult of personality around himself and ruled China until his death in 1976.

According to a Beijing political analyst CNN spoke with, it’s likely that there will be a move to simplify Xi’s teaching to “Xi Jinping thought” next year at the 20th Congress.

But unlike Mao, Xi rules at a time when many Chinese people have at least some access to information from outside China. In order to counter that, the CCP is pushing for a kind of saturation coverage of propaganda by using loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda from early in the morning until evening. This too is something Xi has borrowed from Mao:

Loudspeakers started appearing in factories and playgrounds in the early 1970s and quickly became a common sight. They fell silent later in the decade, with the death of Mao and the rise of television. Their return, to mountainous villages in the country’s south and smoggy towns in the frigid northeast, is an old-school strategy for what’s become a highly sophisticated propaganda apparatus.

“Putting the loudspeaker system back means the party wants to impose its own will on people, no matter if they want to listen or not,” said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing historian and political commentator. “It’s moving backward.”

China’s cult of personality around Xi is dangerous because Xi himself is pushing China to become more nationalist and aggressive in conflicts around the world. The most worrisome one is the potential conflict over Taiwan. Earlier this week I wrote about a white paper from the Japanese Defense Ministry which suggested China was destabilizing the region with its threatening behavior toward Taiwan. There was a semi-official response to that:

Communist Party officials in northwestern China appear to be advocating a “continuous” atomic bombing of Japan after their social media account shared a controversial viral video over the weekend.

Still live on the YouTube-like platform Xigua, under an account run by the Baoji Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, the video calls for Beijing to launch nuclear strikes on Japan if Tokyo intervenes in a Chinese invasion of democratic Taiwan…

“When we liberate Taiwan, if Japan dares intervene by force, even if it only sends one soldier, one plane or one ship, we will not only return fire, but also start a full-scale war against Japan,” the commentary says.

“First, we will use nuclear bombs. We will continue to use nuclear bombs until Japan offers its second unconditional surrender,” it adds.

That’s where Xi Jinping’s leadership is taking China.