Foreign students show love for President Xi in propaganda video

Handsome, wise, humble, charismatic and resolute, the list goes on. A propaganda video showing foreign students enthusing about President Xi Jinping, made by the Communist Party organ People's Daily, has quickly gone viral in China.

Mr Xi is on his first state visit to the US, dealing with the thorny issues of China’s slowing economy and asserting his country’s international role, but in the video, which shows an extensive array of foreign students displaying affection bordering on the bizarre, he is “Xi Dada” or “Uncle Xi”.

A platinum blonde student from California describes the leader as "handsome. Yeah, he's super charismatic" while an Austrian student, in a shocking-pink short-sleeved smoking jacket, and whose name is later revealed as Benedikt, says: "His face was a little bit cute. So everyone just looks at him and they just like him."

Mr Xi is variously “a very humble leader”, “a very powerful leader” and a “wise and resolute president”.

The video was released on Twitter and YouTube, although both are blocked in China, and is part of a broader plan to promote China's soft power. It is similar to a video released to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the end of the second World War, in which foreign students spoke of their enthusiasm for a military parade to mark the event.

Similar to that video, there is a sense that the students are rather naively trying to please their hosts rather than appear as propaganda tools.

In Who is Xi Dada? a lumberjack-beshirted Chicagoan describes how Mr Xi had been referred to as Winnie-the-Pooh, a reference to a cartoon showing the Chinese president walking alongside President Obama during a previous visit, which had been likened to a similar image of the rotund honey-loving bear and his pal Tigger.

The soundtrack, inexplicably, is Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver, although the late musician was as popular as Celine Dion here in the 1990s.

“He is not just a leader, he is like part of your family,” says another of the interviewees, while another says: “I also have a copy of his book and the governance of China and I would actually love to read it.”

The Californian student, who speaks fluent Chinese, then goes on to tell how she met Xi Dada and she read him a poem. Another says how she hopes her future husband is like Xi Dada, and another encourages him to continue the fight against corruption.

Who would have thought the campaign against graft would have been such a hot topic of the dormitories of Tsinghua University and the Beijing Foreign Studies University?

The final messages encourage Xi Dada to “jia you”, which translates as “add oil” and means “come on”, except for Benedikt the Austrian who makes a pussycat face and says “so cute”.