It looks like Communist China will mark the 80th anniversary of Chairman Mao’s original arts crackdown with a new and dramatic propaganda reboot.

Redefining “art” to suit the totalitarian purposes of China’s President, Xi Jinping, the Chinese-language People’s Daily recites the party’s long-standing script on the proper role of art under a dictatorship, all but calling for a rededication to socialist realism, the discredited Soviet art style allowing only for propaganda that masquerades as art.

The article channels the spirit of Mao Zedong’s famous 1942 speech to the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature: “There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics,” Mao said. “Proletarian literature and art are … cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.”

With those words Mao put the kibosh on art for art’s sake, thereafter enslaving Chinese art to serve Communist Party politics.

Taking license with the notion artists must discover their craft within themselves, the article in People’s Daily suggests the ultimate source of “advanced” art — as in, art the party will permit — is found “within the inner world of the people,” i.e., in a place within the collective masses only apparatchiks can identify.

“There are 100 ways to create art and literature, even 1,000,” People’s Daily quotes China’s chief carnival barker, Mr. Xi, as saying, “but the most fundamental, the most crucial, and the most authentic method is art that takes root within the people and art that takes root within life.”

Praising several recent state-approved productions — including a theatrical reboot of a 1958 film about a young Chinese girl seeking to establish a new communist cell — the article tasks artists with making “the spiritual and cultural demands” of the people both “the start and end point” of all artistic work.

Naturally, what constitutes “advanced” art can only be defined by the man behind the curtain, Mr. Xi, and thus art that fails the dictator’s ill-defined litmus test will be banned.

Thus, coerced by purposefully vague standards, artists will likely err on the side of caution and self-censor in order to not run afoul of the party.

This ambiguous recitation of “advanced” art forms from People’s Daily comes after the government’s recent celebration of the highest-grossing film in Chinese history — an anti-American propaganda film about the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, in which a six-division Communist Chinese sneak attack failed to destroy vastly outnumbered American Marines and allies — and after months of increased scrutiny of Communist China’s entertainment sector.

In June, government oversight of entertainment ramped up when the Cyberspace Administration of China announced a two-month operation to “rectify” internet fan culture deemed “abusive” and “harmful.”

The crackdown issued regulation against celebrity popularity rankings, “pornographic” fan fiction, celebrity-inspired fund-raising, and many other targets within fandom, before broadening its scope to lay blame on individual celebrities for the behavior of their fans.

Throughout autumn, the government continued to intensify its campaign, first by issuing a blanket ban on “sissy” men, next by blocking the screening of Hollywood films with “LGBTQ+” relationships, before finally publishing a “black list” of 88 banned Chinese celebrities in November charged with unpatriotic, immoral, and decadent behavior.

Having finished the dress rehearsal, the party now seems billed to formally call for an encore of the spirit of the Yan’an Forum on Art in Literature at its 80th anniversary come May 2022, relegating the arts to once again serve as mere “cogs and wheels” within the Communist Party’s “revolutionary machine.”

Yet, while those who lived through the Cultural Revolution had but to resist eight revolutionary plays, this time around China’s popcorn-eating masses will be propagandized by the full weight of a new, Red, billion-dollar entertainment juggernaut, the likes of which Jiang Qing and Leni Riefenstahl could scarce dream.