Support for Chinese Nationalism and White House Performance of Chinese Propaganda Song

At the White House state dinner in honor of Chinese President Hu Jintao on January 19, Lang Lang played a famous anti-American Chinese propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.” The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army” soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.” The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades.
The name of the song is “My Motherland,” originally titled “Big River.” In an interview broadcast on Phoenix TV, the first thing Lang Lang is quoted as saying is that he chose the piece. He then said, “I thought to play ‘My Motherland’ because I think playing the tune at the White House banquet can help us, as Chinese people, feel extremely proud of ourselves and express our feelings through the song." [33][34]