September 30, 2019
ChinaFile
Earlier this year, the Chinese sci-fi film The Wandering Earth became the Lunar New Year’s biggest release. The film was hailed in China as innovative and groundbreaking, a milestone in science fiction filmmaking and one of the best and most authentic stories to display China for the world. In August 2013, at his first national meeting on propaganda and ideology, Xi Jinping instructed China’s propaganda workers to “tell China’s story well, and properly disseminate China’s voice.” A year later at a foreign affairs work meeting, Xi emphasized that China “must raise our country’s soft power, telling China’s story well.” The Wandering Earth, like other big-budget Chinese blockbusters of recent years that extol the virtue, prowess, and uniqueness of Chinese culture, appears to be just the kind of “China story” Xi had in mind.