Beyond Persuasion: Propaganda as Signaling in Chinese Public-Schools

What powers do propaganda have beyond persuasion, and what legislative infrastructure has been implemented in modern China do develop this power? This paper is an analysis of the systematic implementation of cultural symbolism through the theoretical lens of propaganda as signaling to investigate how patriotic education is systematically instituted in public primary, secondary, and high schools to target "troublesome" groups such as student protestors after Tiananmen Square following the pro-democracy student movement in 1989, Uyghur groups in Xinjiang following the 2009 conflict with Uyghur ethnic minorities, and students involved in the ongoing protests in Hong Kong since the handover from the United Kingdom in 1997. While there is a concerted effort on the part of the CCP to utilize symbolism to foster and develop a sense of a Chinese national identity or Zhōngguó shēnfèn (中國身份), this implementation of propaganda also has the effect of repressing those who hold differences of opinion by signaling the party's strength, and quelling public signals of those who would mobilize opposition. Though often dismissed as irrelevant by scholars in the post-Ideological world, a growing body of scholarship argues that propaganda can be powerful even when it is not persuasive. To understand this power, this paper will implement the theoretical model of propaganda as signaling investigating the manner in which state crafted symbolism is manipulated in public-schools to propagate symbols to students. This paper will further investigate how students are then themselves turned into cultural symbols in China. Given the limitations of the context in which this work is constructed, this paper is not an empirical analysis of the ramifications of propaganda as signaling in schools, but an analysis of the political infrastructure that has been developed within China to construct nationalism, and repress rebelliousness in schools.