Celebrity in China

2. Military Celebrity in China: The Evolution of ‘Heroic and Model Servicemen’

2 Military Celebrity in China: The Evolution of ‘Heroic and Model Servicemen’* Louise Edwards A key aspect of celebrity and fame production in China is the extensive involvement of the Party-state. In most other parts of the world, privately owned media corporations assume the dominant role in the creation and production of famous individuals and stars. But, in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese government is a key player in the cultural industries sector. Indeed, in the military realm the Party-state led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the predominant creator of celebrated and famous individuals. Individual military figures are propelled to national fame in China through the Party-state’s powerful publicity machinery. Model military heroes, or ‘Heroic and Model Servicemen’ (sic) (jun yingmo ren), appear within a longstanding systemized identification of political and social cohorts designed to inspire ‘improved’ behaviour or ‘enhanced thinking’ in the population. Model soldiers, model workers, model peasants and model youth have been persistent features of the media world since the CCP founded the PRC in 1949 and have emerged from both Confucian and Stakhanovist deployments of exemplars (Stranahan 1983: 229–30). The PRC population’s pre-existing experience with the extensive promotion of moral and ideological exemplars adds to the complexity and particularities of contemporary celebrity culture. China’s ‘soldier celebrities’ are clearly not identical to the popular culture celebrities of the music and movie industries in Hong Kong, * Thanks to Xi Ping and Maggie Qian for their assistance and the Australian Research Council for grant funding. Louise Edwards 22 Taiwan, Europe and the USA — they dwell in the interstices between propaganda and publicity for the Party-state. As with celebrities in the popular culture realm, their images are designed to incite desired and designed action or thought from among ordinary people. But, China’s ‘heroic and model servicemen’ are not produced to promote sales of commodities such as movies, music or books; rather they promote ideals of personal behaviour. And, the target audience for such elevated individuals includes members of armed forces as well as the general public. The identification of ‘heroic and model servicemen’ is part of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) regular system for allocating public awards to outstanding members of its ranks. The award system is embedded within the publicity generated to enhance popular appreciation of the PLA and its contributions to building the PRC. In 2007, as part of the eightieth anniversary celebrations of the founding of the PLA, a much publicized national conference of ‘Representatives of Heroic and Model Servicemen’ was convened in recognition of the hundreds of living and dead men and women that have achieved this considerable national honour. A website was constructed with brief biographies of these ‘heroes and models’ stretching back to the 1920s providing insights into the lives and deeds of these extraordinary individuals (‘Zhuixun yingmo’ 2008). From amid the hundreds of current awardees, a handful of individuals are identified for particularly prominent elevation to the status of ‘celebrity soldier’. This elite group of ‘heroic and model servicemen’ achieve tremendous public fame and name recognition and circulate in society in a fashion that is similar to celebrities from the commercial world of popular culture. They do not conform entirely to common notions of ‘celebrities’; who are usually associated with mass (often youth) culture and the performance of trivial deeds for commercial gain. However, Maureen Orth (2004) has shown that celebrities emerge from myriad sectors of society — the military sphere is no exception. Their unity as a category comes from the celebrities’ common ‘visibility’ rather than their ‘accomplishments’ (Ponce de Leon 2002: 11). Yet, even within this broad definition, military personnel would appear to fit more comfortably into the realm of the ‘hero’ known for his/her ‘great accomplishments’, for example on the battlefield, rather than that of the ‘celebrity’ whose ‘fame’ derived from mere mediafed visibility. Early scholarship on celebrity suggests that an unproblematic distinction can be drawn between heroes (embodying greatness), on the 23 Military Celebrity in China one hand, and celebrities (embodying fame), on the other. Daniel Boorstin (1972) made a case to protect the heroes from an expanding celebrity culture wherein the merely ‘famous’ individual claimed heroic status. He argued that the fundamental difference between a celebrity and a hero is that the former can be constructed but the latter cannot — the celebrity lacks the authentic achievements that mark...