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Children’s star role when dignitaries come to town
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She’s only 10, but Dai Jingya has already come face to face with more heads of state than most people will in their lifetime.
She has rubbed shoulders with Chinese President Xi Jinping four times, and greeted the leaders of Singapore, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Denmark.
Dai is one of a group of children picked from Beijing schools to welcome the constant stream of foreign dignitaries coming to the capital to pay their respects, alongside People’s Liberation Army soldiers and a host of top Chinese officials.
In closely choreographed performances that always take pride of place on CCTV’s evening news, Xi and his guest first review the honor guard at the Great Hall of the People on Tian’anmen Square.
Next the pair walk past a phalanx of around 40 children, who on cue burst into ecstatic screams of “Welcome to China” in Chinese and English, jumping up and down waving a Chinese flag in one hand and the visitor’s emblem in the other.
“I really like coming here to welcome the foreigners, we get to miss school and sometimes I get to see myself on the evening news,” Dai said.
But she has yet to glimpse US President Barack Obama, she said, adding he was the leader “I want to see the most.”
The welcome ceremonies have a long history, but the presence of children was re-introduced after Xi took power in 2012, following a decades-long gap.
Under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong, smiling children in red neckerchiefs from the Young Pioneers were frequently on hand to welcome foreign leaders.
After his death in 1976, China moved the formal welcome ceremonies from the airport to the Great Hall of the People, and two years later the government stopped organizing citizens to line the roads.
In 1989, the protocol department ordered that primary and middle school students would no longer take part in welcoming state visitors.
But Xi has revived the practice.
A few other countries use children in similar ceremonies, but rarely with such prominence.
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