China Adds a Feature to Phones: Patriotism

In China, the state-controlled mobile service company has changed its customers' cellphone ring-back tones to a patriotic song -- "Guojia," or "Country" -- sung by the actor Jackie Chan and a female vocalist. The company's representative said any customer who did not like the tune could switch to other options at no cost by following instructions on its Web site. She said she did not know how long the song would continue to play otherwise. The cellular provider, China's biggest, is far from alone in trying to add its own flourish to the commemoration of 60 years of Communist rule. Numerous companies have changed the background colors of their Web sites to red and yellow, the colors in the Chinese flag. But Hu Xingdou, a reform-minded economics professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, said China Mobile went overboard in tinkering with its customers' phones. "The current efforts to instill ideology makes me feel that the authorities consider ordinary Chinese people to be unpatriotic or even mentally challenged," he said. "So they enforce this patriotic education on people."