In the year when it will celebrate 60 years in power, China’s ruling Communist Party has launched a campaign to encourage people to pay their respect to the martyrs who helped to make the revolution possible.

The launch of the new website is timed to coincide with Tomb-Sweeping Day -- an ancient tradition that falls on April 4 when families remember the dead. The custom of visiting family graves has seen a revival in recent years since it was again permitted following the revolutionary fervour under Chairman Mao when such practices were condemned as feudal superstition.

The online memorial set up by the party’s Central Civilisation Office offers the public a chance “to show their respects to those who died in the revolution”.

Official figures from the site show it has been an instant hit. More than 500,000 people have paid an online visit since it was set up on April 1, and of those some 60,000 have posted comments.

The move is intended to encourage the spirit of the revolution in a country where most people now live by the capitalist dream and where the traditional Communist virtues of self-sacrifice to a greater cause play little role. Taking advantage of a ancient ritual, the Party may be trying to make traditional virtues an anchor of order and stability at a time of wrenching social change.

Those still eager to remember those who died in the revolution have several options on the website that is dominated by a picture of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, a granite obelisk erected in 1958 in Tiananmen Square. A click on the “I want to pay respects” tab brings up the figure of a man dressed in black and grey who then makes the three bows that have been the traditional form of respect in China for centuries. Click on the “Donate Flowers” tab and funereal wreaths of white and yellow flowers pop up around the steps of the memorial.

Or a visitor can post a comment. Those have been coming in thick and fast, and all very much in the same tone. Chen Binping, a primary school student from eastern Jiangxi province – one of the main bases of the communist revolution, wrote: “The national martyrs sacrificed their lives for our happy life. I will study hard to contribute to the country.”

The thousands of other comments are in similar vein. And the curious can see which regions of China have the most respect for the martyrs. The site offers statistics from each province that shows the highest number of responses from the poor central province of Anhui, accounting for 46 percent of the total. In second place is Beijing with 18 percent and then eastern Shandong with 16 percent. The fewest are from Tibet, Hong Kong and Macau, accounting for just 0.01 percent each.

Tens of millions of people will head out to family graves on Saturday to clean the tombs. They will burn increasingly lavish offerings of paper models of items the dead may need in the afterlife, ranging from euros and ID cards to get along in paradise as well as mobile phones.

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