ABSTRACT
China's music-entertainment programmes highlight the ongoing strategic use of music and culture for political purposes, including for building a sense of national consciousness. While the Communist Party of China focused on using art to persuade the masses on the benefits of socialism in earlier years, the key political messages since the 1990s have been about nation-building and creating a sense of solidarity based on national unity. Music plays an important role as a symbol of harmony, unity, modernity, and Chineseness. At the hardened extreme, linguistic, visual and musical modes reinforce each other to create relatively easy to read and fixed Party-state ideological messages of unity, unification and the importance of China in a new world order. Even if one were to disagree, the tight combination of reinforcing symbols makes the messages clear. In the multiethnic frame, 'orthodox' performances overtly stress the unity and happiness of the fifty-six nationalities.
