Party's promotional video goes viral online

A video promoting the Communist Party of China featuring grassroots Party members has gone viral online, generating positive comments on the Party's engagement, while some pointed out its technical immaturity.

The 90-second video, produced by China Central Television, presents six Party members from all walks of life, from a sanitation worker to a policeman, who are all dedicated to their work and are always ready to offer help in daily life.

The video was first broadcast on CCTV at the end of June to commemorate the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Party, and then gained popularity online, earning more than 20 million hits on Tencent Video.

Many people reposted the video on Weibo, with some saying "come and watch the first-ever advertisement of the Party".

"Any organization, including the Party, needs marketing and self-promotion. The practice, like political advertising, is very common in the West but is still something new in China," said Bi Yantao, a professor of communications at Hainan Tropical Ocean University.

"It is good to see the Party learning to employ various means of political communication and tell the stories of ordinary people," said Bi.

The video starts with the questions "Who am I?" and "What kind of person am I?", and showed the work environment of the six representatives of the 83 million Party members.

"I'm the last one to leave," "I'm the first one to start work," "I'm the one who cares about others most," people say in the video.

Bi, who is also the founder of the Hong Kong-registered World Society for Strategic Communication, said political communication is still at a primitive stage in China.

"The intention is good, but technically it is not very professional," Bi said.

It is not the first promotional video for the Party, though. Last year, an English one called The Communist Party of China is With You Along the Way, was produced by On the Way to Revitalization Studio.

It also featured ordinary people and identified China as a country that is "growing fast yet with development disparities" and "full of opportunities along with untold challenges".