CCP Prepares to Further Tighten Ideological Controls Through ‘Patriotic Education Law’

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China’s communist regime drafted a “patriotic education law” during its rubber-stamp National People’s Congress to maintain “national unity”.

A spokesperson for the Legislative Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress said on June 25 a draft of a patriotic education law would be reviewed June 26-27.

The spokesperson said the move aimed to promote and ensure “patriotism education in the new era” through the rule of law.

Experts say that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always deliberately confused the concepts of the party and the country. The making of this patriotic education law, they say, is another attempt to force Chinese citizens to love the party and its regime.

Li Yuanhua, an Australia-based scholar and former professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing, said on June 26 that the CCP has bundled love for the country, the party, and socialism together.

“This legislation is to protect the party from downfall, its totalitarian rule, and socialism,” Li told The Epoch Times.

Pro-CCP supporters protest the arrival of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on April 5, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Mainland Chinese lawyer Yang Ning (pseudonym) said the CCP has been preaching patriotism for decades via nine years of compulsory state education.

“Now that the CCP feels that deception with a pen [education] can no longer achieve its goal, it uses the form of law to force people to bow their heads or remain silent. This is its most direct purpose [of making the ‘patriotic law’],” Yang said.

The drafting of the law follows three years of the regime’s draconian “Zero-COVID” policy amid an economic downturn and high unemployment.

The law is being seen as part of a doubling down on ideological control in China, which includes formulating more laws and regulations on information and freedom of expression.

Yuan Hongbing, an Australia-based legal scholar, told The Epoch Times on June 26 that the CCP’s behavior has caused outrage and resentment among some Chinese.

The CCP wants to use the coercive force of the law to ensure people’s “loyalty” to it, “forcing people to love tyranny, that’s what they are doing now,” he said.

Yuan said this happens only when a totalitarian dictatorship develops to the extreme.

“There is no political party in the world that can force people to love it by the means of law. The CCP has deprived people of the right to freedom of thought and freedom of belief,” he said.

“Now, it even wants to deprive people of their emotional freedom and use state violence to force people to love the party. This violates the basic norms of modern civilization.”

Li said that the international community has distinguished the CCP from the Chinese people and China, which is what the party fears most.

“The party must bind the CCP and China, the Chinese people and the so-called socialism together as a bargaining chip against the world,” he said.

Li believes that drafting the patriotic education law is a manifestation of the regime’s response to its crisis of governance.

“It first confuses a concept: patriotism is not loving the nation but loving the CCP’s tyranny. It can feel that many people do not agree with or believe in its set of things. It has a sense of crisis, so in the form of legislation, it finds more ways to push for brainwashing the people.”

Li said this seems to be the party’s legal preparations to control the people to annex Taiwan.

“In the future, if the CCP invades Taiwan by force, if people refuse to be drafted, it will say that you are not patriotic and violating the law,” he said.

Li is also concerned that the patriotic education legislation will cultivate more “little pinks” or “big pinks” (pro-CCP Chinese). After being incited by the CCP’s patriotism, these people will do some stupid things and become a tool for the party to fight against the free world.

The USS Chung-Hoon observes a Chinese navy ship conduct what it called an “unsafe” Chinese maneuver in the Taiwan Strait, on June 3, 2023. The Chinese navy ship cut sharply across the path of the American destroyer, forcing the U.S. ship to slow to avoid a collision. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Andre T. Richard/U.S. Navy via AP)

Yuan said that the party now wants to use state coercive power to suppress any thought or behavior of resistance. But this also means that the CCP has entered the breaking point of a more dangerous crisis.

“Nearly a decade of CCP tyranny has bankrupted its entire brainwashing technique, and the CCP is facing an unprecedented political crisis and a crisis of social trust,” Yuan said.

“Now it tries to force people to love its tyranny; it will only make the Chinese people resist it more strongly.”

Ning Haizhong and Luo Ya contributed to this report.