A week before China's national day celebration on October 1, tech giant Tencent is promoting a red Chinese flag filter to users of its all-in-one app WeChat.
On Monday, Chinese netizens began adding a small national flag to the right corner of their profile picture on Wechat.
The online campaign was an instant hit on the super app. The service crashed at one point due to an avalanche of users, Tencent told the National Business Daily.
On another social media site, the Twitter-like Weibo, the Communist Youth League of China, the youth wing of the Communist Party, launched a campaign asking users to share a photo of themselves with the national flag.
It asked users to spell out their love to the motherland with hashtag #I love China on all social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which are blocked in China.
Next Tuesday, October 1, marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. The ruling Communist Party took control of the mainland in 1949 after it won a civil war against the Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang, which fled to Taiwan.
The Chinese government is using the anniversary to highlight the progress the country has made in the past 70 years in order to bolster its legitimacy, said Adam Ni, a China researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney.
Due to China's rapid economic rise as the world's second-largest economy, "there's something to be proud of," Ni said.
This official promotion of nationalism pairs well with the growing popular sentiment of patriotism among Chinese people, he added.
This year, according to political analysts, feelings of nationalism and patriotism seem to be reaching fever pitch head of the key anniversary.
They say this is driven, in part, by the ongoing protests in Hong Kong and the US-China trade war, both of which are generally perceived to be threats to China's sovereignty and prosperity.
In both digital and real life, preparations for the anniversary have become pervasive.
Since August, broadcasters have been ordered to air patriotic programs instead of popular fare such as period dramas or shows featuring well-known stars.
In early September, the Workers' Stadium in Beijing, a soccer stadium just five miles east of Tiananmen Square, was reportedly shut down and being used as a preparation site for a grand military parade on October 1.
Other tech companies have also cranked up efforts to pay tribute to the all-important political anniversary.
Last Friday, Didi, an Uber-like ride-hailing service, launched a program that allows verified drivers who are members of the Communist Party to flash their membership.
The drivers get a hammer and sickle icon on their profile page, and their cars will carry a red sticker saying "party member driver" near the dashboard, according to a Didi statement.
This chauffeur program is only available in the capital city of Beijing and through Didi's premier service.
Currently, getting one of these drivers is a random process. There's no option for passengers to request rides specifically from party-member chauffeurs, a Didi spokesperson told Inkstone by email, and didn't respond to a question about how the program was related to the upcoming anniversary.
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