Cultural Revolution and Later History
During the Cultural Revolution, Tian Han was imprisoned, and the March of the Volunteers was therefore forbidden to be sung; as a result there was a period of time when "The East Is Red" was used as the unofficial national anthem. The anthem began to played once again from the 20th PRC National Day Parade in 1969 onward.
The March of the Volunteers was restored by the National People's Congress in 1978, but with different lyrics; however, these new lyrics were never very popular and caused a great deal of confusion. For example, the last sentence of the lyrics read "raise high Chairman Mao's banner".
During China's 1981 volleyball World Cup victories, both the old and new lyrics were sung simultaneously amongst fans. On 4 December 1982, the National People's Congress resolved to restore the original 1935 version by Tian Han as the official national anthem. Of note, the current lyrics do not mention either the Communist Party of China or Mao Zedong and the reversion of the lyrics was symbolic of the downfall of Hua Guofeng and the cult of personality of Mao and the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping.
The National People's Congress made the song the official PRC anthem in a 2004 amendment of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. The anthem is mentioned immediately after the national flag.
Although popular among Nationalists during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the song was banned in the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, until the 1990s.
The anthem was performed in an official capacity in Hong Kong for the first time following the handover of the territory to the PRC in 1997, and the handover of Macau in 1999. English translation of the anthem is adopted by the University of Hong Kong in significant events such as graduation ceremony.
The use of the anthem in Macau, China is governed in Law n.o 5/1999 (zh:第5/1999號法律, pt:Lei de Macau 5 de 1999) since 20 December 1999. Article 7 of the Law requires the national anthem to be accurately performed pursuant to the sheet music in Appendix 4 and prohibits the lyrics from being altered. Willfully failing to follow the sheet music or altering the lyric when performing the national anthem in public is criminally punishable by imprisonment of up to 3 years or up to 360 day-fines. The sheet music in Appendix 4 has the lyric in Chinese only without Portuguese translation even though both Chinese and Portuguese are official languages of Macau. There are no analogous laws in Hong Kong or in mainland China.
The anthem is written completely in Vernacular Chinese, while the "National Anthem of the Republic of China" is written in Classical Chinese.
Read more about this topic: March Of The Volunteers
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