People can pledge loyalty to the Communist Party of China on blockchain

After Study Xi, China has a new high-tech propaganda app that will record a Party member’s loyalty in an unalterable ledger

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Published: 5:34pm, 30 Oct 2019Updated: 5:34pm, 30 Oct 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

If you happen to be a member of the Communist Party and find yourself forgetting why you joined in the first place, China is now keeping a permanent reminder on a blockchain.

A new app allows members of the Communist Party to pledge their loyalty to the Party by writing down the reasons they joined, and answers will be stored on a permanent distributed ledger using blockchain technology. This way a person’s party loyalty will stay recorded in cyberspace forever.

The platform is called Lian Shang Chuxin and, similar to the now well-known Study Xi Strong Country app, it’s another online tool inspired by the teachings of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Lian Shang Chuxin, or Chain on Aspirations, has been launched at a time when state-sponsored blockchain projects are in the spotlight. (Picture: Lian Shang Chuxin)

Lian Shang Chuxin, which awkwardly translates to Chain on Aspirations, dubs itself as a tool for Party building in cyberspace. The platform was launched last weekend by The People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

It follows the now well-established tradition of naming state-sponsored online platforms after untranslatable bureaucratic jargon. In this case, the name comes from Xi’s phrase “don't forget your original intentions,” which urges Communist Party members to stay true to their mission.

And what better way to do that than by recording responses in an immutable and untamperable record enabled by blockchain? And better still, Party members don’t even have to download a separate app to jot down why they joined. They can just open up a mini program in WeChat, the country’s favorite social platform.