[Marxism] China promotes 'Red Tourism' to communist sites

["Jeffrey Thomas Piercy, El Pato Comunista" <mqduck@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=27202

China has declared 2005 the "Year of Red Tourism," promoting visits to
historic communist sites to polish the ruling party's image and boost
development in rural areas where Mao Zedong's guerrillas waged their
revolution.

The National Tourism Administration has issued a list of "30 choice red
tourism routes" and "100 classic red tourism sites," the official Xinhua
News Agency reported.

They include Yan'an, the western hill town where communist forces lived
in caves in the early 1940s, according to the tourism agency's Web site.

"First, it will guide the public to remember great historical figures
and their contributions," said an unnamed administration official quoted
by Xinhua. "Second, it will help the economically backward former
revolutionary bases catch up in economic development."

Many sites associated with China's communist history are in poor, rural
areas that have been left behind as eastern cities surge ahead in a
two-decade-old economic boom.

Other destinations on the administration's list include Xibaipo, a town
southwest of Beijing where communist leaders met on the eve of their
1949 victory.

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