Party poopers

WITH tens of millions of Chinese suffering from the country's worst floods in years, President Hu Jintao convened a meeting of the ruling Politburo on July 23rd, to discuss what he said was an urgent issue. To a roomful of grim-faced officials, he declared that China must “resolutely resist” vulgar, cheap and kitsch forms of culture. The “great revival” of the Chinese people was, he said, at stake.

Thus was born a new campaign against what officials call the “three vulgarities”. The government news agency, Xinhua, has described this “new morality movement” as the leadership's first broadside against vulgarity in years. Some online commentators in China call it a throwback to the 1980s and hugely unpopular drives that were designed to eradicate “spiritual pollution” and “bourgeois liberalisation”.