As the coronavirus continues to spread in China, so are questions multiplying and replicating in the online space. And while containing the virus is a matter of urgent concern, tackling these questions is of equal importance.

In recent days, a couplet has become popular online that goes something like this, though it is hard to do it justice in translation: “If popular will came first and not what leaders espoused, what need would there be to shut cities or mouths?”

The essential idea in this clever play on politics and history (which I won’t get into right now) is that we might not be in the place where we are now had it been possible in China to hear what people were trying to communicate in the weeks before the full scale of the coronavirus epidemic was exposed in the second half of January.

Many Chinese have noted with anger and dismay how officials in Hubei province and in Wuhan were focussed, even as the virus was wreaking havoc, on holding the so-called “two meetings” – annual gatherings of the people’s congresses and political consultative conferences at both the provincial and city levels. As those familiar with China’s political system will know, the people’s congresses and political consultative conferences are meant to be the channels by which the “popular will,” or minyi (民意) is expressed and conveyed.

How could it be, people have asked, that such a critical threat to the public was breaking out right in the midst of these “two meetings,” and yet the ostensible representatives in attendance completely turned their eyes away and kept their mouths shut?

When we search through media reports in Hubei province in January, the following picture emerges of the “two meetings” held at the provincial and city levels:

Times: the 4th Plenum of the 13th Wuhan CPPCC, held from the morning of January 6 to the morning of January 10, for a total of 4 days; the 5th Plenum of the 14th Wuhan People’s Congress, held from the morning of January 7 to the afternoon of January 10, for a duration of 3 days; the 3rd Plenum of the 12th Hubei Provincial CPPCC, held from the morning of January 11 to the afternoon of January 15, for a duration 4.5 days; the 3rd Plenum of 13th Hubei Provincial People’s Congress, held from the morning of January 12 to the morning of January 17th, a duration of 5 days.

Locations: The Wuhan municipal session of the “two meetings” was held at the Wuhan Theater (武汉剧院), located 5.8 kilometers from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the virus is believed to have first spread to humans; the Hubei provincial session of the “two meetings” was held at the Hongshan Ceremonial Hall (洪山礼堂) in Wuchang, 17.3 kilometers from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Readers may recall that on January 21, when the campaign from the top against the epidemic had already begun, the official Spring Festival Gala (春节团拜晚会) was held at this venue, attended by both the Hubei Party secretary and the governor – and some performers in the ceremony were reportedly ill at the time, according to official propaganda that reported this fact with an air of sacrifice and heroism.

Participants: 512 delegates were in attendance at the Wuhan CPPCC meeting. 657 delegates were in attendance at the Hubei provincial CPPCC, and 689 delegates at the Hubei People’s Congress. This brings the total in attendance at the “two meetings” at the city and provincial levels to 2,369 people.

Propaganda: During the “two meetings” sessions at both city and provincial levels, a total of 148 pages were devoted to the meetings in four major newspapers, including Hubei Daily, the official organ of the Hubei Provincial Committee of the CCP, Chutian Metropolis Daily (a commercial spinoff of the Hubei Daily Newspaper Group), Changjiang Daily, the official organ of the Wuhan Municipal Committee of the CCP, and the Wuhan Evening Post (a commercial spinoff of the Changjiang Daily Newspaper Group). These 148 pages exclude frontpages reporting the opening and closing of the meetings, and pages simply publishing the texts of government work reports.

The vast majority of the content on these 148 pages consists of simple praise for accomplishments in 2019, and hopes for 2020. Here is an example of a special page in Hubei Daily reporting on the “two meetings.”

From the information above we obtain the following picture.

From January 6 to January 17, for 12 full days, Wuhan was in the midst of what the Party refers to as “two meetings time” (两会时间). Because all delegates to the CPPCC are present at the people’s congress, we can imagine 1,013 delegates crowded into the Wuhan Theater, and later 1,346 delegates crowded into the Hongshan Ceremonial Hall. Those present at the provincial event also included consuls from the United States, France and Great Britain, a number of citizen observers and a large number of journalists. The newspapers present readers with a picture of a momentous event.

As I prepare the analysis to follow, it is with a sense of unease. I can’t help wondering whether these 2,369 delegates are still doing OK, given what we now know of the spread of the virus at the time. The thought of them all gathered in close quarters as we see on the page above is a frightening picture in retrospect.

But considering that we now find in these same official Hubei media positive reports like this one praising many of these same delegates for working on the “front lines,” even “giving up Spring Festival,” in order to assist in fighting the coronavirus epidemic, there are some things that simply have to be said – and questions that must be asked. We can wish these delegates well and support their actions to control the epidemic, yet still expect answers as to why they remained collectively silent during “two meetings time,” under the immediate threat of the virus.  

Let us review the facts about the context in which the “two meetings” sessions were held at the city and provincial levels in Hubei.

The opening of the “two meetings” in Wuhan was happening just as an outbreak of pneumonia was revealed. Here is the January 1 edition of Chutian Metropolis Daily.

And here is a page from January 6 edition of the Changjiang Daily reporting on the notice from the Wuhan Health Commission on “viral pneumonia” on the very same day as the opening of the Wuhan Municipal CPPCC.

Even though, as we now know, the situation was far worse than suggested by these notices from the Municipal Health Commission, the news of “viral pneumonia” was already out in Wuhan, and there were warnings from doctors already being shared through WeChat groups. It’s just not possible in this context that delegates were not cognizant of the outbreak.

Not only is it true that officials taking part in the meetings must have known about the situation – but in fact delegates from the healthcare field very possibly had first-hand knowledge of the outbreak and its seriousness.

Among Wuhan CPPCC delegates there were 16 from the healthcare field, including delegates from Wuhan No. 1 Hospital, Wuhan No. 6 Hospital, from the Union Hospital of Wuhan Medical School, from Wuhan TCM Hospital, and even from the Respiratory Clinic of Wuhan No. 1 Hospital. Among these, the Union Hospital was one of the earliest to treat coronavirus patients.

According to a report from Caixin, as early as December 31, “The five-story building housing the Infectious Diseases Ward of the Union Hospital had to convert on floor into an isolation ward for infectious respiratory disease.”

Among the Wuhan CPPCC delegates there was also a representative from the Wuhan City Epidemic Prevention and Control Center, and two from the Wuhan Health Commission.

The focus of the “two meetings” in Wuhan was on the notion of its being a “new first-tier city,” meaning that Wuhan would seek a seek first-tier status like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen by attracting further investment, promoting technology development, making moves in education and human resources and so on. These were the top policy issues.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus outbreak, this major challenge concerning the entire population of Wuhan, was nowhere on the agenda.

According to reports in Chutian Metropolis Daily, the major points of action for the general welfare during the “two meetings” in Wuhan were “transportation,” “housing,” “social security,” “education,” “ecology” and “healthcare.” The last of these, healthcare, was about “raising the health of the entire population.” Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang (周先旺) demanded in his government work report that “the system of epidemic disease control be strengthened, raising capacity in dealing with sudden-breaking public health incidents and in treatment.”

But in news reports we cannot find any discussion of these points in relation to the coronavirus epidemic.

If we say that during its own “two meetings time” Wuhan missed the most optimal window in the control of the epidemic, then we can say that it was during the provincial “two meetings time” that Hubei missed its last opportunity to control the full outbreak of the disease.

On January 10, the Changjiang Daily and other papers published the results of the investigation into the source of the cases of viral pneumonia, and the phrase “new coronavirus” entered the public view.

The participants in the Hubei provincial “two meetings” would certainly have seen such reports, and they would have heard the chatter in the streets before they crowded into the Hongshan Memorial Hall on January 11. We can be sure that these provincial delegates were by this time more knowledgeable about the situation than delegates during the city-level meetings had been – and this is especially true of the delegates from the medical field. By January 11, the day the Hubei Provincial CPPCC opened, at least 7 doctors had already been infected by the virus.

Among the delegates to the Hubei CPPCC, there were 26 from the medical profession. They were from Tongji Hospital, Union Hospital, the People’s Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan Central Hospital, Hubei TCM Hospital and others. Like Union Hospital, experts from the People’s Hospital of Wuhan University had already been dealing with coronavirus patients since December.

It was on December 30, in fact, that Li Wenliang (李文亮), an ophthalmologist (眼科医生) at Wuhan Central Hospital, posted the warning to his WeChat group for which he was admonished by police.

On January 11, the day the curtain opened on the provincial CPPCC, Li reportedly developed a fever. On January 12, the day the provincial people’s congress opened, he was admitted to the hospital. On February 1, his diagnosis was confirmed. On February 7, he passed away.

Among the delegates to the provincial CPPCC, there was one who served as Party secretary at the Hubei Health Commission. On the day the “two meetings” began, as media reported the understated Wuhan Health Commission notice, this official surely would have been in the know:

This news release from the official Xinhua News Agency says:

Since December last year, confirmed cases in Wuhan of cases of unexplained viral pneumonia have been on the rise. . . . According to notices, there have to now been 41 confirmed cases of new coronavirus infection presenting as pneumonia, with 2 cases already released, 7 in serious condition, and 1 death.

The report revealed that since the start of the outbreak, Wuhan had applied five countermeasures with the support of the national and provincial governments: 1) using all means to save patients; 2) conducting an epidemiological investigation; 3) widely publicizing information on disease prevention; 4) cooperating with the national and provincial authorities in investigating the origins of the disease; 5) cooperating with the national and provincial authorities to make timely information reports to the World Health Organization and others about the situation.

The shadow of the epidemic had already fallen, and the situation was serious. But there was already a full event calendar in preparation for Hubei’s “two meetings,” which would be used to celebrate the glorious achievements of 2019, and to promote the 2020 realization of a “comprehensively well-off society,” a key propaganda objective across the country.

The front page of the January 13 edition of Chutian Metropolis Daily will give readers a clear sense of the mood of the “two meetings.” The page is all about the benefits for the people that were realized in 2019, and the riches to come for 2020:

The “two meetings” agenda promised three things to the people: “prioritizing education” (重教育), “raising protections” (提保障), and “preserving health” (保健康). That’s right, preserving health.

As an article in the Changjiang Daily, “Looking to Hubei’s 2020,” reported on January 13, the first task in protecting the welfare of the people in 2020 would be “creating a national and regional medical center.” On January 12, the provincial governor, Wang Xiaodong (王晓东), said in his government work report that “without the full health of the people, there can be no fully well-off society.” Wang demanded that, “the problems that cause the people anxiety must be treated as major issues, be met with real action, and be given full energy, steadily increasing the people’s sense of benefit, prosperity and security.”

What exactly caused the public anxiety at that moment? How could the 1,346 delegates taking part in Hubei’s “two meetings” not have known?

They raised their hands, they applauded, they actively discussed, they accepted interviews with reporters, but just as was the case at the Wuhan city level, there was not a hint at the provincial meeting about the coronavirus epidemic.

If we look at Wuhan in the early stages of the outbreak and at the “two meetings,” one clear question we are left with is why these 2,369 delegates all kept silent, so that these major meetings on policy were completely futile and unproductive in the face of a serious public health crisis. Some might respond with cynical laughter to such a question. They might ask: In China’s political system, what power do these 2,369 delegates actually have to address serious issues? Can we really treat these meetings as genuine opportunities for decision-making at all?

Well, OK. Point taken. But in any case, let’s review the operation of the system in terms of its original intent, stated mission and responsibilities.

1. The basic defined responsibility of delegates to the CPPCC and people’s congresses is to convey concerns to the upper levels. The outbreak had already begun in Wuhan by the end of 2019. So, of those delegates preparing to take part in the “two meetings” at either the city or provincial level, did anyone visit hospitals, the health commission or research clinics? Some delegates, who already had patients quarantined and under treatment in their own hospitals, didn’t need to go far to do so.

2. Toward year’s end, as the government work reports were being prepared at the city and provincial levels, it should have been typical practice to solicit views from different sectors. Did anyone raise the epidemic with the government? Did the government consider adding related content to the government report? In the end, why was nothing included?

3. On January 1, police in Wuhan issued a notice about 8 people being questioned and admonished for sharing “untrue” information about pneumonia cases online. On January 2, China Central Television also reported this news as well. How did delegates in Hubei and Wuhan, particularly those from the medical profession, respond to this? What impact did this incident have on the words or actions of these delegates as they took part in the “two meetings”?

4. Did any delegates at either the city or provincial levels exercise their legal right to inquiry, raise questions about the epidemic to health department officials, to emergency response department officials, or to the mayor or governor (for example, about medical personnel being infected by patients)?

5. Did any delegates at either the city or provincial levels exercise their legal right to deliberation (审议权), raising the issue of the epidemic during deliberation of the government work reports?

6. During the “two meetings” period, the Hubei Health Commission was already working with the National Health Commission to report information about the outbreak to the World Health Organization. If reports could be made to the WHO, why could the provincial government not also inform the 2,369 delegates to the “two meetings” at the city and provincial levels?

7. Did any delegates, including those from the medical profession, exercise their right to democratic supervision (民主监督) or political participation (参政议政), offering suggestions to the government on prevention and control of the epidemic?

8. Did any delegates submit views or proposals concerning possible measures to be taken to deal with the epidemic, for example through local laws or regulations, thereby exercising their right to make proposals (提案权)? Were earlier proposals made on the quarantine of Wuhan, for example?

9. The 2020 “two meetings” in Hubei were the first time that “delegate channels” were set up with the idea of allowing delegates to answer questions and speak up in public. Were these interactive channels actually used to respond to the most pressing concerns of the public?  Why did the media not use these channels to address questions about the epidemic to delegates?

When the curtains closed on the provincial people’s congress in Hubei, Party secretary Jiang Chaoliang (蒋超良) praised “all delegates for faithfully fulfilling their responsibilities and reflecting the will of the people.” But the fact is that the “two sessions” meetings at both levels in Hubei in 2020, from conception to start to finish, suffered serious and unforgivable errors in terms of the exercise of responsibility.

The “two sessions” are not meant to be celebrations or carnivals. The people’s congress system and the political consultation system are meant, at least in principle, to be watchtowers and protective walls safeguarding society and the people. When such an immense threat faces the well-being of the people, it is impossible not to ask serious questions about what ails this system, about what kind of virus has infected it.

One month before the epidemic struck Wuhan, the 4th Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the CCP released a policy document called “Decision Concerning Major Questions in the Continuation and Improvement of the System of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics, Promoting the Modernization of the Governing System and Governing Capacity” (关于坚持和完善中国特色社会主义制度 推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化若干重大问题的决定). The Decision reiterated the point that “the people’s organs for exercising state power are the National People’s Congress and local people’s congresses at all levels.” It talked about “supporting and guaranteeing the people’s exercise of state power through the people’s congresses, and ensuring that the people’s congresses at all levels are democratically elected, are accountable to the people, and are supervised by the people, and that state organs at all levels are created by, are responsible for, and are supervised by the people’s congresses.”

The coronavirus epidemic has worked like a CT scan of China’s system, exposing the deep contrast between lofty rhetoric and real conduct, and displaying the “voiding out” (虚化) of the people’s congress and political consultative systems. Millions of people are now bearing the burden of a calamity brought out by this chronic disease of the system.

As I was researching the early stages of reporting on the coronavirus outbreak in China, I came across a number of interesting statements in various official media.

In the People’s Daily on December 16: “Some live animals may carry viruses that, if transported carelessly, could cause the spread of disease.” In the People’s Daily on December 25: “[We] will focus on the prevention and control of major infectious diseases, the handling of public health emergencies . . . revising a number of urgently needed national standards.” In Changjiang Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Wuhan city leadership, on December 17: “Humans feel a sense of triumph over new discoveries and victories in medicine, and so they rest easy, but are unprepared for the approaching epidemic.”

Were these articles on disease and preparedness about Wuhan? No.

The first article was a criticism of the transport of live animals, the second a report on the creation of the new National Technical Committee on Health Quarantine Standardization. The third statement, from Wuhan, came in the context of a book review. All three of these reports used keywords like “disease,” “epidemic” and “public health incident” that seem very of the moment in light of the coronavirus outbreak — but they had nothing whatsoever to do with the epidemic that was at that time spreading silently.

In this article I look back on coverage focusing on four newspapers in particular – the People’s Daily, the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party; Hubei Daily, the official organ of the Hubei provincial CCP leadership; Changjiang Daily, the official organ of the CCP leadership in Wuhan, right at the center of the epidemic; and Chutian Metropolis Daily, a commercial spin-off under the umbrella of Hubei Daily. I focus on the period from January 1, 2020, when media reported that the Wuhan city government had issued a notification on disease cases in Wuhan, and January 26, when media reported on the meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee on prevention and control of the outbreak.

Media Context: A New Year in Politics

Chinese leaders do not pass the New Year and the Chinese Spring Festival in the way that ordinary people do. For them, these events are a political stage for the coming year. And while we have no way of knowing exactly what the Central Propaganda Department specifically planned for its official messaging during this key period, we can glimpse the orientation quite clearly through media coverage itself.

The priorities in in the New Year were all about three major tasks Xi Jinping wished to achieve. First, he hoped to loudly proclaim China’s success in reaching the “full establishment of a moderately wealthy society” (全面建成小康), as some will recall that 2020 was defined back in the 2000s under the Hu-Wen administration as the year that the CCP was to achieve this goal.

This publicity campaign was to be all about China parting ways with poverty once and for all. In line with this, we did see the state media promoting Xi’s “fight against poverty” (脱贫攻坚). Remember that when this “fight” was first declared back in November 2015, it was also linked to the 2020 goal of “moderate wealth,” or xiaokang (小康), with the idea that China’s poor would enter the era of full xiaokang along with the rest of the country.

The achievement of “moderate wealth” and the throwing off of poverty were symbolized in the Party media this month by the figure of Xi Jinping entering the home’s of the people. This has been the central theme of much coverage of Xi’s visits to the countryside in recent years, as in this article looking back on his visits to the Hunan in November 2013 – under the phase, “The General Secretary Visited Hour Home” (总书记来过我们家).

Another apparent objective was to capitalize on Xi Jinping’s visit to Myanmar in order to re-emphasize the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s core foreign policy program.

Finally, the arrival of the Spring Festival period could be used to show Xi Jinping among the people, emphasizing his closeness to them (亲民) and his status – recently emphasized more insistently, since its re-emergence last August – as “people’s leader” (人民领袖). Visits with the military could also be used to stress his status as commander (统帅). And, importantly, a meeting with former top leaders in the Party (including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao), could be used to demonstrate their commitment to Xi’s leadership and to his governing concepts.

In the following images of the January 1, 2020, editions of the People’s Daily, Hunan Daily, Changjiang Daily and Chutian Metropolis Daily, you can clearly see how the above priorities were played out, with little variation between papers.

These were the frames and campaigns that surely determined in the days and weeks before the coronavirus outbreak emerged as a story that could not be ignored, with clear and urgent public relevance.

In central and provincial-level Party newspapers, I found a clear shared trend, namely that four political keywords that had experienced the highest level of per-article use in the previous two months (“scalding” on the 5-level scale developed by CMP) had all further risen in intensity.

The first two keywords were the “two protections” (两个维护), meaning to protect the “core“ leadership status of Xi Jinping and the authority of the CCP, and “Xi Jinping thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想), Xi Jinping’s so-called “banner term” (旗帜语). Taken together, the fresh intensity of use of these two terms suggests that propaganda leaders intended to push a new offensive in raising Xi’s status as a “leader”, or lingxiu (领袖).

The phrases “fight against poverty” (脱贫攻坚) and “comprehensive building of a moderate wealth” (全面建成小康) are rooted, as I previously said, in the fact that this year is meant to be the year of achievement of the “moderately wealthy society” in China.

All four of the abovementioned terms can be seen as the core of the January propaganda strategy, all a way to put the focus on the “leader” and his glorious achievements.

It’s an understatement to say that events in Wuhan – and now beyond – have thrown a wrench in these plans. The image below is a headline on page five of the January 1, 2020, edition of Chutian Metropolis Daily, the commercial spin-off of the official Hubei Daily. It reports that a new form of pneumonia has been identified in Wuhan, but says in the subhead that there are “no clear signs of human-to-human transmission.”

Twenty Days in the People’s Daily

From January 1, 2020, through to January 20, 2020, for a full 20 days, not a word appeared in the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper about the epidemic in Wuhan. Below you can see all 20 front pages from the newspaper over those days.

All 20 of these People’s Daily editions could be seen as classic examples carrying out the demand for the “two protections,” emphasizing the power and prestige of Xi Jinping. During these 20 days, 19 principle headlines had to do with Xi Jinping. Of these, there are three of his official speeches, three high-level meetings he chaired, two reports of his visits overseas, and so on. There were also four separate reports on the theme of, “The General Secretary Visited My Home,” in keeping with the focus on prosperity and the “moderately wealthy society.”

Together, these 20 front pages included 66 articles in which “Xi Jinping” appeared in the headline.

Things did not change until January 21, when at last news of the epidemic made it into the headlines.

But on this front page, the epidemic is still not the top story. The top story, accompanied by the image, is about Xi Jinping paying a visit to a People’s Liberation Army base in Yunnan.

Local Party Media

From January 1, the day the Wuhan Health Commission (武汉卫健委) issued its notice on the outbreak, to the January 21 edition of the People’s Daily, 20 days had already passed. Under the system governed by the Chinese Communist Party, the Party controls everything (党管一切). And we should remember that the principal readers of Party newspapers – Party members who have subscriptions to various Party papers through their Party organizations – are also the backbone of governance in China.

During this 20-day period, what response did local Party media in Hubei have toward this rapidly spreading disease?

On January 2, Chutian Metropolis Daily reported that eight people had been taken in by the police for spreading inaccurate information about “viral pneumonia” (病毒性肺炎), which had “created harmful social effects.”

On January 6, the same newspaper’s top story on the front page was about tens of thousands of people attending a college admissions event. Another top story was the opening of the local meeting of the people’s congress in Wuhan. A small story just to the right of the masthead was the second notice from the Wuhan Health Commission, saying that SARS and other respiratory illnesses had been ruled out for 59 patient cases.

The happy news in this second Wuhan Health Commission notice was the bell toll that essentially announced that all was well, and the time had come for the festive political atmosphere of the “two meetings” in Wuhan, of the people’s congress and the political consultative conference.

Here are three front pages from Changjiang Daily, the official CCP organ in Wuhan, during the “two meetings.” They follow a pattern rather like the People’s Daily as seen above, focusing on the top provincial leaders and on official news, with some key national Party headlines.

The epidemic was not mentioned at all in the local media while the “two meetings” were in session. There was only a slight mention by Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang (周先旺) in the government’s work report that there was a need to “strengthen the construction of disease prevention and control systems, improving the capacity for emergency treatment and medical treatment in the case of public health emergencies.”

The “two meetings” in Wuhan closed on January 9. The next day, January 10, was an extremely important day in the development of the epidemic. Here is the front page of Chutian Metropolis Daily that day, with a headline reporting that the pneumonia in Wuhan had been identified as a novel coronavirus.

This news, as well as the new notice from the Wuhan Health Commission two days earlier, was entirely ignored by the top Party leadership in Hubei province. The time had now come for the provincial-level people’s congress, and this new “two meetings” season blanketed media coverage.

The “two meetings” of the political consultative conference and the people’s congress opened on January 10 and 11 respectively. In his government work report on January 12, Hubei Governor Wang Xiaodong (王晓东) had a section dealing with key problems, but it made no mention of the epidemic. Another section that dealt specifically with public health talked about the issue in the context of the main propaganda theme of building a “moderately wealthy society.” “Without the health of all the people,” said Wang, “there can be no comprehensively well-off [society].” Again, there was no mention of the illness spreading in Wuhan. Wang’s report talked about “doing everything in our power to continuously enhance the people’s sense of prosperity, happiness, and security.”

It was surely bitter irony for Wang that his report was published in Hubei Daily on January 21, the very same day that Xi Jinping’s high-level instructions on the epidemic made the People’s Daily and media across the country. The obvious gap between the very public, published priorities in Hubei and the direction from Xi was a serious misstep, ironclad proof of error.

But seen from another perspective, Hubei Daily through January was mostly a perfect picture of the servant doing the master’s bidding, and the January 21 paper was simply a rare glint of originality.

If we look back on Hubei Daily frontpages from January 1-20, twenty pages in all, we find that 14 of these are identical to the People’s Daily – essentially just local Hubei versions of the CCP’s flagship newspaper. This is very typical, it must be said, of provincial-level Party newspapers in China since 2013, which have largely lost any of the relative autonomy they might have previously had. Since Xi Jinping’s pronouncement in February 2016 that media must be “surnamed Party,” we have seen the same happen to commercial newspapers as well, so that in the case of Hubei, Chutian Metropolis Daily is also largely a mirror of its “mother paper,” Hubei Daily.

In the midst of this 20-day period there was another bit of news that would in retrospect prove unfortunate for the leadership in Hubei. On January 7, the province’s top leader, Jiang Chaoliang (蒋超良) held a collective study session to address Xi Jinping’s remarks on emergency management. Jiang demanded that officials: “Adhere to bottom line thinking, strengthen risk awareness, strengthen emergency management and emergency capacity building, and resolutely take up the political responsibility to prevent and resolve major security risks. [The Party] must be extremely responsible to the people, do a good job in public health and epidemic prevention, and strengthen open and transparent information disclosure.“

Needless to say, two weeks later, this language would ring hollow.

On January 20, shortly before Xi Jinping’s response to the epidemic became public knowledge, Changjiang Daily, the official Party organ in Wuhan, published the results of its “Media Responsibility Report” – this being an exercise now demanded of Party-state affiliated media in China, in which they enumerate their actions, from compliance to innovation. The preface to the report read: “We move with the flow of the people, leaping to wherever the people are. We embrace the internet and set out for the clouds, for the responsibility of the media has never changed . . . .” It added: “The people call, we answer.”

Was this meant to be a joke? Of course not.

As Spring Festival approached, there were no early warnings in Hubei province. The four notices from the Wuhan Health Commission were in each case major news seriously downplayed, reassuring the public that all was well.

On January 17, 18 and 19 in Chutian Metropolis Daily, the mood was celebratory. If people felt fear, it would be impossible to gather them together – and how then to create the impression that all was well?  

And so we had villagers gathering to eat dumplings.

    We had tens of thousands gathering for a banquet.

We had the distribution of 200,000 free travel tickets to encourage travel to tourist sights in Wuhan.

But of course all was not well, and the victims of these celebrations, of course, were the people of Wuhan, of Hubei and of the whole country.

Joy and Peace in a Time of Tragedy

On January 21, Xi Jinping made his official remarks on responding to the coronavirus outbreak, which should have meant that the entire country had now entered a period focused on fighting the epidemic. But when we look back on the People’s Daily, we find something that almost beggars belief – the front pages of the CCP’s flagship newspaper on January 22, 23, 24 and 25 have nothing whatsoever to do with the epidemic.

Page layouts are of course also a form of discourse, and an important one in China. Front pages in Party newspapers are a clear representation of the political language and priorities of the Party leadership.

So let’s have a look at what we can see.

Here is the front page on January 22, which leads at the very top with news of Xi Jinping’s visit to Myanmar on January 17 and 18. After that, with the images, we have Xi in Yunnan province on the 18^th, during a time I suppose when he must have issued his instructions concerning the epidemic that resulted in the response on the 20^th.

From January 19-21, Xi Jinping was in Yunnan “visiting with cadres and the masses of different ethnicities,” and we have once again the theme – the pre-established theme, you will recall – about “fighting poverty” and “comprehensively building a moderately wealthy society.” Xi was busy visiting among the people, and it was during this time, on January 21, that the first news came of a confirmed case of the coronavirus in the city of Kunming.

While in Yunnan, Xi emphasized the need to “adhere to bottom-line thinking and strengthen risk awareness.” But there was no talk at all of fighting the epidemic.

The front page of the People’s Daily on January 23 reported that Xi Jinping had “met with elderly comrades,” these being former top Party officials, including Hu Jintao and Zhu Rongji.

In what is actually quite a rare practice, this report, meant to demonstrate fealty and trust in Xi’s leadership, actually listed out 111 names of elderly comrades with whom Xi met. It stressed that they “gave a lofty assessment of the historic achievements of the Central Party with Xi Jinping as the core.”

On January 24, on the eve of Chinese New Year, the People’s Daily focused on the Spring Festival celebration for the CCP Central Committee and the State Council.

Xi Jinping delivered what was clearly a very carefully prepared message, calling for “the full building of a well-off society and a determined fight against poverty.” “We must race against time!” he declared. But in that key moment, as an infectious disease was racing against all Chinese, there was no mention at all of the epidemic.

On January 25, there were at last two reports about the epidemic on the right-hand side of the People’s Daily front page. Either of these stories would have merited top billing on the page, but this was not the case. Priority was given instead to a report in the anti-poverty propaganda series, “The General Secretary Visited Hour Home.”

During this key period, from January 21 to 25, many party members, cadres and ordinary people were full of suspicions. They wondered how it was that no member of the CCP Standing Committee had yet managed to visit the scene of the epidemic in Wuhan, something that had happened in the case of both the SARS epidemic and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. When people felt fearful and at a loss, why was there all this focus on peace and happiness?

The blame certainly does not fall on the shoulders of the top editors of these Party papers. Since the start of the year, the pages of China’s Party newspapers have been given their “assigned seats.” The activities in which leaders would take part had already been fixed, and the themes to be emphasized had been more or less carved in stone. Inspections, greetings, expressions of condolence, banquet speeches – everything had already been planned. There would be no detracting from the prestige of the “leader.”

The system of the CCP is like a great big elephant. It is difficult for the sudden and unexpected to force any change to its huge and lumbering gait.

All of the deception and miscalculation that has happened in the wake of the revealing of the epidemic has been a source of immense public anger. But in such a time of disaster, we have also seen journalists within the system trying to act in good conscience, and internet users too have taken to new digital platforms to try to raise their voices.

Since January 26, as media across China reported on the meeting of the Standing Committee to address the epidemic the day before, as seen above, China has at last entered true epidemic response mode.

From this point on, we can expect the Party media to begin playing a slightly different game. Let us watch and see.

Wandering through the online world of the WeChat platform over the New Year holiday, I came across an interesting pair of images shared by another user. Both were of books by Shen Haixiong (慎海雄), a deputy minister of China’s Central Propaganda Department, the Chinese Communist Party’s internal body responsible for information and ideology, and the current head of the China Media Group, the consolidated state broadcasting group formed almost a year ago — and also known as “Voice of China.”
Both books dealt with the study of the ideas and utterances of President Xi Jinping, playing on the surname “Xi” (习), which can also mean “practice” or “study.” And both were the same drab shades of yellow and manila. The first book was called Views on Putting Xi Study Into Practice (学习实践论), while the second was called Studying Xi in the Present (学习进行时).

But the similarity between the two books that really caught my eye was the way that both used a very distinctive version of the character for “Xi,” one I suspected might be the calligraphy of Xi Jinping himself.
A quick internet search and I was able to dig up the following letter written by Xi Jinping in January 2014 to so-called “college student village officials” (大学生村官), referring to recent college graduates who work as assistants to senior village officials.

Notice the signature on the letter to “college student village officials,” in which Xi Jinping wishes them all generally good health and good fortune, noting their contributions as the “grassroots.” This certainly looks like the same “Xi” with a flourish that we see on the cover of both of Shen Haixiong’s books.
And then there is this letter, which Xi Jinping wrote in March 2016 to Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), then the chairwoman of Taiwan’s Kuomintang party. The letter is signed March 26, 2016, by “General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping.”

At this point, we can safely confirm that this is indeed Xi Jinping’s own hand, and by extension that the “Xi” used by Shen Haixiong on his book covers is Xi Jinping’s handwriting too.
We can find the same “Xi” elsewhere on the internet without much difficulty. This time it is in a reference to the “Words  of Xi,” presented as a regular feature in state-run media.

The yellow character for “Xi” in the title is unmistakably Xi’s own handwriting.
Appropriating the handwriting of top leaders for one’s own purposes is not really something serious, but it does have quite significant echoes in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. I’m referring, of course, to the formalisation and widespread application — a process that in Chinese we call jizi (集字) — of the calligraphy style of Mao Zedong.
Mao Zedong was known as a calligrapher, and he wrote out the mastheads of many Chinese newspapers. There were also certain cases, however, where newspapers were unable to invite Mao to personally write out their mastheads and chose instead to do cut and paste jobs using existing examples of his writing, cobbling together their own Mao mastheads.
In recent years we’ve seen a proliferation of this phenomenon of jizi in the Chinese media. And stumbling across Shen Haixiong’s books on WeChat sent me on a brief chase through recent examples, which can be very illuminating.
Readers may remember that in March last year a state-produced documentary lauding China’s economic and technological achievements under Xi Jinping was released to great fanfare. The documentary, which became the highest grossing documentary film in China’s history upon release, was called “Amazing China,” or in Chinese lihaile wo de guo (厉害了, 我的国). Here is one of the promotional images for the film.

Some of you, taking a closer look at the calligraphy used for the promotional image, may note that it seems vaguely familiar. And in fact, we can find identical calligraphy being used in recent months in newspapers across the country for “Amazing China” features, and for column headings and the like.
For someone who lived, as I did, through the Mao era, a question keeps sneaking up: Isn’t this calligraphy in Mao Zedong’s hand?
Once you start looking for it, you quickly find that Mao-style calligraphy is being used all over the place these days. Here, for example, is a promotional add for another recent documentary from China Central Television commemorating the 40th anniversary of reform and opening. The documentary is called “We Experienced it Together” (我们一起走过):

Mao’s hand here is unmistakable. And what a contrast that makes when you stop to think about it. At its very heart, reform and opening was a moment of “transformation away from Mao” (改毛), a repudiation of the suffering and damage his actions inflicted upon the country. To use the Chinese Communist Party’s own discourse for this pivot away from Mao, it was about “correcting mistakes” (纠正错误). So here we have Mao’s pretty calligraphy introducing a documentary about 40 years of reform and opening. Is that really appropriate?
Besides, considering this as an instance of jizi (集字), we might ask when Mao ever uttered the phrase, “We experienced it together.”
But adapting Mao’s script to present-day phrases and sentiments may be a whole lot easier than you think. I found a website, in fact, that is dedicated to Mao’s unique calligraphy style, and it includes a “Mao Script Generator” (毛体字体转换器在线生成器) allowing anyone to transform simple characters into Mao’s own hand.
If we give “Amazing China” a try, here is the result we come up with:

This is without a doubt the script used for the documentary film’s title, only the character for li (厉), or “fierce,” has been changed somewhat — probably a decision by the producers of the film made out of concern it might otherwise be unrecognisable to most Chinese.
I couldn’t resist putting “We experienced it together” into the Mao Script Generator next:

That certainly works. Who could have guessed just how easy it is to add Mao Zedong’s handwriting to a documentary about 40 years of reform and opening, a policy initiated more than two years after his death?
But the Mao Script Generator doesn’t always work to great effect, as demonstrated by the following propaganda image for the 500th anniversary of socialism, apparently thrown together by the Beijing Institute of Technology.

In Mao Zedong’s poem “The People’s Liberation Army Captures Nanjing” (七律.人民解放军占领南京), there is a line about how “change is the law of nature” (人间正道是沧桑), which provides the four characters in the phrase above. There is calligraphy from Mao’s own hand for these four characters. But for some reason unknown, the Mao Script Generator uses Mao’s version of the last two characters but throws out different versions of the first two characters, zheng (正) and dao (道).

So it seems this online Mao Script Generator brings together a vast collection of Mao writing, and can put these together into various different phrases as suits the expectations of the user.
With such power at my fingertips, I could hardly resist entering my own choice, a phrase that has nothing whatsoever to do with Mao Zedong, a phrase we can perhaps expect to be on the rise in the coming months: “Xi Jinping Thought” (习近平思想):

I wonder if you notice anything of interest. Let’s try it with just the character for “Xi”:

In fact, the “Xi” that  emerges from the Mao Script Generator is almost identical to that used by Shen Haixiong on the covers of both of his books.
And so a little secret emerges. President Xi Jinping has fashioned his signature in the Mao Zedong calligraphy style.
 

What were the factors behind the Southern Weekly incident? Was there any particular reason broader calls for freedom of speech had their origin in a conflict centering on this Guangdong newspaper? If tensions between Southern Weekly staff and propaganda officials had been running high for months, why did censorship of the New Year’s special edition create such a backlash? And why in particular did tensions center on the annual New Year’s Greeting?
Why Southern Weekly?
Southern Weekly has had a difficult past. The newspaper’s ups and downs are a snapshot of media change over the past three decades. When the official newspaper of the Guangdong Party leadership, Nanfang Daily, launched Southern Weekly in 1984, media reforms had just begun in China. Southern Weekly was intended as an experiment in market-driven media, an entertainment publication that would be profitable and also serve as a vehicle for media talent development.
But the paper’s first chief editor, Zuo Fang (左方), had a different vision for Southern Weekly. He wanted to create a new kind of publication that parted with the Soviet “Pravda model” in which newspapers served only as propaganda tools of the Communist Party.
Zuo Fang imagined Southern Weekly as a platform of general enlightenment and enrichment. The newspaper, he said, could not always tell the whole truth, but it would resolutely not tell lies. Under Zuo Fang’s leadership, the newspaper grew steadily bolder in its criticism of those in power.
By the beginning of the 1990s Southern Weekly was regularly running into trouble with officials in the Central Propaganda Department. In the early 1990s, when a report critical of the police was found to contain factual errors, propaganda officials tried to use this as a pretext to shut Southern Weekly down. Fortunately, Party leaders in Guangdong province protected the newspaper and it managed to avoid the worst.
When Jiang Yiping (江艺平) took over as Southern Weekly‘s chief editor in 1994, she worked with Zuo Fang to define a new editorial vision: “Promoting justice, showing care, standing for conscience (弘扬正义，彰显爱心，坚守良知).”
It was a few years later that Zuo Fang invited me to join the newspaper. He talked about how China’s economy was advancing rapidly even as political reforms lagged seriously behind. Reporting on crony capitalism would inevitably become an important focus of Southern Weekly‘s work, he said.
Reports on corruption appeared regularly in Southern Weekly in the mid-1990s. The paper grew more and more confident professionally, investigative reporting becoming one of its specialties. Joining Southern Weekly as deputy editor-in-chief in 1998, I saw the paper climb to its professional peak.
Commercially speaking, Southern Weekly is a successful newspaper. Its circulation is over one million, its advertising revenues top a billion yuan, and its profits stand run into the tens of millions. Its continued success after the mid-1990s drew constant and intensifying pressure from the authorities. During my time at the paper, we received on average more than ten “news commentaries” from the Central Propaganda Department’s News Commentary Group each year. These ultimately resulted in Jiang Yiping’s removal in 2000, and my removal in 2001.
Southern Weekly has long been a thorn in the side of Party conservatives and entrenched interests. Over the past 10 years, the paper has suffered repeated assaults from the authorities and many of its best reporters and editors have been forced to move on. Propaganda officials repeatedly tried sending down ideologically rigid officials from Party newspapers down to Guangzhou from Beijing to serve as editors-in-chief of the newspaper. They appointed “reviewers” who would go over copy with a strict eye. But a consistently strong core editorial team at Southern Weekly meant it was able to withstand such encroachments.
In May 2012, the deputy director of Xinhua News Agency, Tuo Zhen (庹震), was appointed propaganda chief of Guangdong province. He made it his mission to bring Southern Weekly and Southern Metropolis Daily to heel. The campaign of pressure against Southern Weekly went into high gear. Instances of direct intervention and prior censorship began happening more frequently. In an open letter released in the midst of the Southern Weekly crisis last month, staff at the paper revealed that at least 1,034 reports had been killed in 2012 alone.
Why the New Year’s special edition?
The “special edition” is a salient feature of Chinese media. Special editions for various holidays and commemorations have been appearing regularly in China’s media since the mid-1990s. Newspapers see these editions as crucial opportunities to express their unique character and ideals.
When I was deputy editor-in-chief of Southern Weekly, I was involved in a number of special editions, including one for the 80th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
At the end of 1999, as newspapers across China prepared “millenium editions,” there was a carnival atmosphere in the air. Many media even sent reporters off to Pacific island nations, where they were to witness and record the first sunrise of the new millenium.
Southern Weekly‘s response was entirely different. It sent reporters and editors back to their hometowns to witness and record history and change there. One reporter wrote about his mother’s experiences during China’s Great Famine. Another reporter wrote about how his father had been tragically killed in an explosion at a quarry while working as a migrant worker.
Every New Year’s special edition of Southern Weekly since 1999 has included features in which reporters return to the countryside and to city districts to witness the changes underway there. Together these pieces, which always deal with the same places, form a serial portrait of change in China over more than a decade.
Southern Weekly special editions are known for their outspokenness on core ideas like democracy and civil society. The 80th anniversary edition of the May Fourth Movement called for greater democracy. The 50th anniversary edition of the founding of the People’s Republic of China called for an end to a society of feudal subjects (臣民社会) and the building of a civil society. After 2001, the special New Year’s edition of Southern Weekly began choosing persons of the year as well as reviews of important achievements in press monitoring (much of it investigative reporting) over the past year. The newspaper also looked at some news stories it had been unable to cover during the previous year due to censorship instructions.
These end-of-the-year “inventories,” along with the annual greeting, made the New Year’s special edition a defining product for Southern Weekly.
Due to relentless pressure from propaganda authorities, Jiang Yiping’s position as chief editor was already in jeopardy when the Year 2000 issue came out. In her New Year’s greeting that year she reaffirmed her commitment “not to give up no matter what.”
The tradition of the New Year’s letter at Southern Weekly goes back to the letter from the editor in the first edition of the paper in 1997. In 1999, two particularly strong pieces, a New Year’s special greeting (总有一种力量让我们泪流满面) and a letter from the editor (让无力者有力，让悲观者前行), were widely talked about and shared by Southern Weekly readers. Jiang Yiping and I carried on this tradition when we took over at the paper.
Reviled and Respected
These are the reasons why New Year’s special editions at Southern Weekly (and especially their annual greetings) have long been hated by the Central Propaganda Department — and why they have been loved by millions of readers.
We now know on the basis of accounts from editors at Southern Weekly that cut after cut was made to the 2013 New Year’s special edition — a level of prior interference not seen before at the paper. The biggest fuss was made over the New Year’s greeting in light of its importance and visibility. Ultimately, a deputy propaganda minister in Guangdong personally took over in the writing of the greeting, dictating the text of the letter over the phone. This interference resulted in the embarrassing grade-school error on the paper’s front page about the historical episode of Great Yu Taming the Waters taking place 2,000 years ago (instead of 4,000 years ago).
After enduring wave upon wave of censorship, the original Southern Weekly New Year’s greeting, “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism,” was entirely rubbed away. The final text contained none of the language typically used in the paper — words like “justice,” “truth” and “citizen.” Three phrases from official speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping were also forced into the greeting.
The word “constitutionalism” had appeared 18 times in the original version of the greeting. In the final edit, the last two remaining instances were finally removed, expunging the idea entirely. Also in the final edit, the headline was changed to, “We Are Now Closer to Our Dreams Than at Any Time Before,” a phrase taken directly from an editorial in the Party’s official People’s Daily.
The final version of the New Year’s greeting was trampled into something more closely resembling an official Party report than the conscientious voice of a proud professional newspaper. The imposition was the final straw for Southern Weekly staff.