Year: 2020

As I read through the Chinese media last week and saw the remarks of a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs attacking the United States over the coronavirus epidemic, there was one word in particular that popped out. Here is an image of a related report from Xinhua News Agency, published on April 22.

The word I’m talking about here is fèngquàn (奉劝), which essentially means “to offer a bit of advice”, or to “advise.” But the tone, far from being constructive or consultative, is withering. The headline reads: “Foreign Ministry Advises Certain People: Put More Energies into Doing Your Own Business Well.” It advises, specifically, against talk of China paying reparations over its role in the COVID-19 epidemic.

The tone is also very familiar. Below you can see another article, this time an editorial dating back to December 12, 1957, and appearing in the People’s Daily.

In this case, the editorial addresses former UK Labor party leader Hugh Gaitskell, who at the time spoke on the issue of Taiwan, incurring the outrage of the Chinese Communist Party. The two reports are separated by a space of 63 years, but they assume the same tone and use the same language. There are many other reports in China’s state media that employ similar discourse – what we might characterize as an “advisory vocabulary” (奉劝体).

The word fèngquàn (奉劝) is an ancient word in Chinese. Consult your Chinese dictionary, and you’ll find that fèng (奉) originally had the same meaning as the word gōngjìng (恭敬), which in adverb form means “deferentially” or “respectfully.” Fèngquàn originally had the sense of speaking in such a way as to respectfully advising or persuading someone. For example, one could “advise” others to drink wine at a formal banquet by using the word fèngquàn.

With the development of the Chinese language, however, the word fèngquàn gradually came to shed its sense of respect, morphing into a word having the sense of advising, or guīquàn (规劝), with more satirical overtones, to eventually bearing an unmistakable sense of warning or admonishment (警告). This transformation, and linguistic use, is shared whether one is in mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan.

When we look at the use of fèngquàn in China after 1949 to see who exactly was on the receiving end of such “advisory” language from the Chinese Communist Party, we find that the list is very long indeed.

In the 1950s, we find that the CCP most often advised both the Kuomintang Party in Taiwan and the United States. At the National People’s Congress in July 1957, one delegate was quoted as saying: “I sincerely advise military and government officials in Taiwan: How can Taiwan have freedom under the tightening control of the United States? I hope you can cast aside your concerns and quickly render a decision, striving for the peaceful liberation of Taiwan to reach true freedom.”

The US president too was subjected to such advice: “Eisenhower, I am truly ashamed for you!” raged a September 1958 poem by Guo Moruo (郭沫若) published in the People’s Daily. “You have no need again to lose face on behalf of the American people. I advise you to seek healing for your brain post haste. The American people are equally in search of peace, and I believe they will not embrace such a cheat as you!”

In addition to the US and Taiwan, advisories in the 1950s targeted the UK (as shown above), the actions of a French general in Tunisia, the words in support of Taiwan spoken by Japan’s ambassador to India, an Indian National Congress politician, the Dalai Lama and others. The Chinese military commander Chen Yi (陈毅), then China’s foreign minister, wrote a poem in 1959 urging the Dalai Lama, by that point already in exile, not to think of returning: “I have advice for you,” he wrote. “Do not stop on your way home. The CCP Central Committee has always been lenient. The Buddha said that looking back [and correcting one’s mistakes] is the way to the shore.”

There was of course also a great deal of “advice” directed internally. Rural landlords were “advised” in the midst of the land reform process in the early 1950s, and various “reactionaries” (反动分子) of all stripes (but particularly so-called “rightists”) were “advised” in the midst of repeated political movements.

There was even a case during the Great Leap Forward of the “advising” of unspecified “idle” (懒惰) women. Here is how the People’s Daily spoke in May 1958 of such women: “During the say they rest in bed with their eyes open, and in the middle of the night they get up to make fried rice that they gobble down; when you tell her to produce she won’t go, but says: ‘I won’t go even if the emperor calls me.’ These lazy women are advised to quickly set their bad habits in order!”

Not surprisingly, Mao Zedong could also be found “advising” the Chinese people on the correct path for the country. In 1955, he wrote of the experiences of a number of collectives, and encouraged cadres to go among the masses and learn from these experiences, saying: “This is effective medicine to cure stubborn right-leaning tendencies, and I advise people to give it a try.” By the end of the decade, Mao’s prescription for the country would prove disastrous, as the people’s communes and the ill-advised Great Leap Forward led to mass starvation.

In the 1960s, as relations with the Soviet Union soured, it was time to advise another external adversary. From September 6, 1963 to July 14, 1964, a series of nine strongly worked editorials appeared in the name of the editorial departments of both the People’s Daily and Red Flag magazine that criticized the “revisionism” (苏联修正主义) of the Soviet Union. The word “advise” appeared in each of the last three of these, later collectively known as the “Nine Commentaries” (九评).

“We wish to advise the leaders of the Soviet Union to consider cool-headedly what will ultimately be the result of the revisionism and separatism you encourage,” said an editorial on February 4, 1964. “We wish to advise the leaders and comrades of the Soviet Union to consider how many opportunists and revisionists have in the past been thrown onto the trash heap of history, and must you follow in their footsteps?” said another on March 31, 1964. And the final volley came on July 14, 1964: “Concerning the Soviet Union’s restoration of capitalism, how great are the hopes embraced by imperialism! How delighted they are! We advise the lords of capitalism to revel in their delight. Even if Khrushchev’s revisionist clique serves you, this cannot save imperialism from the inevitability of its destruction.” Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, the “social imperialism” of the Soviet Union became China’s number one enemy, and the object of much “advising,” including over China’s border war in Vietnam and Laos.  

When it came to political unrest in 1989, the blame was thrown again in the direction of the United States. An article in the People’s Daily in July 1989, more than a month after the crackdown, resorted to two advises: “We advise the American government and people at all levels of society to prioritize the overall state of US-China relations, not to interfere in China’s internal affairs, and also not to harbor vain hopes of fomenting a ‘peaceful evolution’ in China. The counter-revolutionary chaos in China’s capital has already quieted, and those who orchestrated the chaos have been defeated. We advise people not to have a myopic view of China.”

And as political change swept through the Eastern Bloc, Premier Li Peng (李鹏) felt in November 1989 that he had to “advise certain people not to be prematurely delighted with changes in Eastern Europe.”

In the 1990s, there was a downturn in the use of “advise” in the People’s Daily. At home, Deng Xiaoping promoted reform and opening, and in foreign policy the emphasis was on “concealing strengths and biding time” (韬光养晦). The idea was that it was in China’s advantage for the world to be focused on peace and development. Deng also emphasized “not casually criticizing or blaming others, not saying things that cross the line, and doing things that cross the line.”

In the Party media, “advise” is an aggressive and hostile posture. Since the 18^th National Congress of the CCP, China has spoken confidently about “Awesome China” (厉害了, 我的国), and has made enemies left and right, attacking on all sides. Toward the outside world, the language has become increasingly arrogant. Correspondingly, we have seen a clear rise in the Party media of use of the word “advise.”

In 2016, in the midst of dispute over the South China Sea and the International Court decision in the case between China and the Philippines, the latter was sharply “advised” by the former. When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida voiced concern about the militarization of the South China Sea during trips to Europe and Southeast Asia, China’s foreign ministry said that China “advised Japan not to hype up a ‘sense of presence’ on the South China Sea issue.”

In 2017, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) “advised” South Korea, issuing a warning over the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an American anti-ballistic missile defense system.

In 2019, as the United States and China were engaged in a prolonged trade war, the US was frequently advised in the pages of the People’s Daily, and nearly all uses of advise were directed at the US. Here is a graph of all uses of “advise” in the newspaper from 2013 through 2019:

This high level of use of the admonishing “advise” has continued so far this year. The “advisory vocabulary” of the Chinese Communist Party is something we should watch closely in the party-state media as an indicator of China’s attitude and tone in its foreign relations.

The “loyalty dance,” or zhongziwu (忠字舞), was a collective dance that became prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, at a time when Mao Zedong and his image reigned supreme over all aspects of life in China. The dancers, grasping their copies of the “little red book,” Quotations From Chairman Mao, would dance, leap and shout to the impassioned ring of the music – all to express their boundless loyalty to the Chairman.

One slogan older Chinese may remember from that time, related to the loyalty dance, is the “Three Loyalties” (三忠于): loyalty to Chairman Mao; loyalty to Mao Zedong Thought; loyalty to Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line. It is tempting to think of the loyalty dance and the “Three Loyalties” as relics of China’s political past. But in fact, there are unmistakable echoes in the present.

How, in Xi Jinping’s so-called “New Era,” does one dance the loyalty dance?

Last month, CMP wrote about how the top leader in the city of Wuhan stirred up trouble as he tried to signal his “gratitude” toward Xi Jinping, suggesting that the people of Wuhan, then still in recovering from the coronavirus epidemic, should undergo “gratitude education.” This leader, Wang Zhonglin, was previously the top Party official in the city of Jinan in Shandong province, and when official media recently reported the news of Wang’s replacement taking up his post, certain words caught my eye.

As Shandong’s provincial Party secretary praised Wang Zhonglin’s replacement in Jinan, we had a pair of loyalties: “He is loyal to the Party,” said Shangdong Secretary Liu Jiayi (刘家义), “and loyal to the General Secretary.”

When exactly did the music start in this present-day loyalty dance?

After Xi Jinping came to power, the word “loyalty” was, at least on the surface, applied to the Party and not to any individual. Xi said during his first five-year term: “Absolute loyalty to the party lies in the word ‘absolute’, which is the only, thorough, unconditional, uncontaminated, and undiluted loyalty.” Xi is of course unlikely to talk himself of the need to be loyal to himself; signaling the need for such expressions of loyalty is something that can be left to others at the top of the CCP.

But as Xi consolidated power at the top and emphasized the need for loyalty to the Party, Li Hongzhong (李鸿忠), the top leader in the municipality of Tianjin, offered what could be considered the most innovative (and perhaps humorous) rendition of the loyalty equation: “If loyalty is not absolute, then it is absolutely not loyalty,” he said.  

In October 2016, as the Party held its 6^th Plenum, Xi Jinping’s status as the “core,” or hexin (核心) became definitive, an unmistakable sign of his solidified position. In fact, the writing had been on the wall through much of 2016, and local leaders correspondingly signalled their loyalty. In February 2016, Chen Quanguo (陈全国), then Party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, led the way, introducing the phrase “firmly protecting, supporting and remaining loyal to the core that is General Secretary Xi Jinping.”

After the 6^th Plenum a slew of different phrases denoting loyalty to Xi cropped up in the Party media. These included:

“Trusting the core in thought, loyal to the core politically, loving the core emotionally, and maintaining the core in action.” – vice-governor of Qinghai province Zhang Guangrong (张光荣), appearing in the Qinghai Daily on November 24, 2016

“Clean, and loyal to General Secretary Xi Jinping.” – Pan Wujun (潘武俊), political commissar of the Ningxia Military Region, appearing in Ningxia Daily on January 11, 2017

“To General Secretary Xi Jinping, absolute loyalty and pure loyalty.” – Jilin Party Secretary Bayanqolu, appearing in Jilin Daily on January 11, 2017

“Loyalty to the Party, loyalty to the General Secretary.” – spoken first by a forestry official in Jilin province, appearing in the Yichun Daily on December 22, 2017

Liu Jiayi’s use of the “two loyalties” (两个忠诚) as he introduced the new leader in Jinan is only the latest example. But so far, the “two loyalties” and related phrases have not yet appeared in the People’s Daily. The loyalty dance is not yet a national dance, and whether it will become so remains to be seen.

Generally speaking, the Chinese Communist Party has three attitudes toward political slogans and key phrases. The first is to welcome and promote slogans, encouraging their use, which applies to mainstream CCP phrases like “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” the “two protections,” or “Belt and Road.” The second attitude is to prevent or restrict the use of certain phrases, particularly those regarded as sensitive, including “judicial independence,” “freedom of speech,” and so on. These are often blocked outright, prohibited from appearing in the media or online.

Finally, there are those terms on which the Party’s attitude might be characterized as ambiguous. These are words or phrases that can, depending on context, be regarded as either sensitive or non-sensitive. In the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, for example, terms like “constitutionalism” and “civil society” were not necessarily regarded as negative, and could be found in the media (particularly the commercial media), but these terms were never used by top leaders, and they could seldom if ever be found in the flagship People’s Daily. Since 2013, these terms have been more explicitly designated as unacceptable, and have virtually disappeared from use in the media.

At the other end of the ambiguity spectrum are terms of praise or positivity that run the danger of being unseemly owing to historical associations or the potential for blowback. One of the most classic recent examples might be “great leader Xi Jinping” (伟大领袖习近平), a phrase that appeared in at least one local newspaper but was subsequently removed.

The phrase “loyalty to the Party, loyalty to the General Secretary” can be regarded as an ambiguous phrase under the current political environment, meaning that, though positive from the standpoint of CCP leaders, it does not appear in the People’s Daily or high-level speeches or other documents. But local officials know, at the same time, that there is little or no risk for them in shouting the phrase to the heavens, which might actually put them in good favour with senior officials.

Liu Jiayi, the Party secretary of Shandong province, knows this principle only too well, which is no doubt why he chose to express his loyalty to Xi Jinping and the CCP while inviting a new city leader to his post.

Nor is this Liu’s first time going beyond the call of duty to shower praise on Xi Jinping. Shortly after the 19^th National Congress in October 2017, the CCP issued a notice standardizing the discourse of praise for Xi, okaying the use of “a leader cherished by the whole Party, loved and respected by the people, and worthy of the title” (全党拥护, 人民爱戴, 当之无愧). But even this moderated phrase, designed to tone down the parade of unctuous accolades for Xi, was soon withdrawn amid concerns of the emergence of a personality cult around the general secretary.

In Shandong, Liu Jiayi was determined to keep the adulation going. He spoke of Xi Jinping as “the staunch core, wise leader and great commander” (坚强核心, 英明领袖, 伟大统帅), the last of this trinity redolent of the title “commander” given in the pre-reform era to Mao Zedong.

So far, Liu Jiayi is in a league of his own when it comes to dancing the loyalty dance. Since January 2020, the country has focused on fighting the coronavirus. When we search newspapers over the past few months, we find Liu is the only leader in the country openly signalling loyalty to Xi Jinping. Liu’s remarks appeared only in Dazhong Daily, Shandong’s official Party mouthpiece, the newspaper directly under Secretary Liu’s thumb, and a few other local Party papers – though they were included in several online sources (including on the People’s Daily news app, shown below).  

These days, there are no signs anywhere else in China’s official Party media of phrases of obeisance such as “loyal to General Secretary Xi” (对习总书记忠诚), “loyal to General Secretary Xi Jinping” (对习近平总书记忠诚), “loyal to the General Secretary” (忠诚于总书记), “treating General Secretary Xi with loyalty” (忠诚于习总书记) and so on.

In this “New Era,” will the loyalty dance become as popular as it was during the Cultural Revolution? As we observe Chinese politics, this is another interesting question to bear in mind, looking for signs of the dance in the ever-shifting discourse of the Party.

Xi Jinping took part yesterday in a video teleconference with G20 leaders to address the coronavirus epidemic. The news is reported prominently on the front page of today’s People’s Daily, just below the masthead. The headline, running vertically alongside an image of Xi, emphasizes his role in the teleconference: “Xi Jinping Attends G20 Leaders Special Summit on New Coronavirus and Delivers Important Speech.”

What was this “important speech”? It was called, “Working Together to Fight the Epidemic” (携手抗疫 共克时艰). China’s deputy foreign minister, Ma Zhaoxu, summarized Xi’s speech, saying that its chief purpose was to introduce “China’s experience,” set forth “China’s proposition,” put forward a “Chinese initiative,” and outline pledges for “China’s contribution.”

Ma praised the speech for “adhering to the concept of a community of common destiny for mankind,” a reference to Xi Jinping’s key foreign policy phrase. He said the speech “integrated China’s practical experience in fighting the epidemic, laying out a series of important propositions, and playing an important guiding role for strengthening international cooperation on epidemic control and stabilizing the global economy.”

In fact, Xi Jinping’s speech was incredibly brief, consisting of just 1,411 Chinese characters. Particularly of note is the fact that just a small portion of the speech, about 106 characters, or seven percent, deals with China’s experience at all. Here is what that section, found right at the outset of the speech, actually says:

Faced with the sudden rise of the novel coronavirus epidemic, the Chinese government and the Chinese people did not shrink from adversity, but placed people’s lives and health above all. With firm resolution, mutual aid, scientific prevention and precise policies, we undertook a people’s war against the epidemic through national mobilization, joint prevention and control, and openness and transparency.

During his inspection tour in Beijing on February 10, Xi Jinping used the terms “people’s war” (人民战争), “total war” (总体战) and “battle” (阻击战) to describe the challenge facing China. All three of these terms appeared in the most prominent headline in the next day’s edition of the People’s Daily.

This trinity of terms has been central to sloganeering in official propaganda in the midst of Xi’s “war” against the coronavirus epidemic. The terms have been used in concert through February and March as successive Politburo Standing Committee meetings have been held, and as Xi visited the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the epidemic.

During the G20 video teleconference, as Ma Zhaoxu tells us, Xi introduced “China’s experience,” using the term “people’s war,” a term going back to Mao Zedong. As Xi Jinping addressed the global response, he also spoke of a “battle,” or zujizhan (阻击战), using another term in his anti-epidemic trinity.

But the third term in the trinity, “total war,” or zongtizhan (总体战), was missing from Xi’s G20 speech. Why would this erstwhile crucial term suddenly be dropped? My guess is that the speech writer, having some knowledge of world history, made necessary adjustments. Why? Because speaking of “total war” before the leaders of the United States, the UK, Germany, France and Russia could invoke shades of the Second World War and seem completely out of context.

For China’s leaders, talk of “total war” may sound determined and resolute. But the  phrase, in fact, is not a positive one. It is generally attributed to general Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s chief military leader during the First World War, whose ideas, some have said, “paved the way for Hitler,” and who has been called “the first Nazi.”  

Below is an image of the cover of a Chinese translation of Ludendorff’s 1935 book Total War.

And here is an image of Ludendorff standing alongside Hitler, taken in Munich in April 1935 to mark Ludendorff’s 70^th birthday. Hitler had ordered celebrations of the day across Germany, and the general was, according to the New York Times, “officially restored to the ranks of Germany’s heroic figures.”

The notion of “total war” meant that a nation would mobilize all available resources for the purposes of war. The term came into wider use in 1943 as the situation in the Second World War took a dramatic turn. The German army was defeated at the Battle of Stalingrad, which began in September 1942 and lasted for several bitter months, and suffered grave setbacks in other key engagements. Finally, on February 18, 1943, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, delivered his infamous “Sportpalast speech” during which he called for “total war,” urging the German people to continue the war at all costs in order to turn back the threat of Bolshevism.

The term seen here on the banner flying over the grand stage at the Berliner Sportpalast in February 1943 – “total war,” or Totaler Krieg – is the very same word as the Chinese zongtizhan (总体战) that has formed part of Xi’s trinity of anti-epidemic slogans since last month.

Search for information on “total war” in the Chinese search engine Baidu, and you quickly come to the following entry on Goebbels’ speech, which also notes that “after the speech Goebbels ordered the closure of luxury hotels and entertainment venues in Berlin.”

Within the discourse of the Chinese Communist Party, the “people’s war” is a now classic “red discourse” (红色词语), but in fact “total war” has always been what can be called “black discourse” (黑色词语), associated with capitalism and capitalist forces. In educational texts for national defense, the theory of “total war” is rejected as “an important guiding ideology of the imperialists in engaging in war,” as can be seen in the following image of related online study materials from the Ministry of Education.

In 1948, as the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang Party were locked in a bitter civil war, the People’s Daily, which had been launched two years earlier, ran a report with the headline: “After a Month of Brave Fighting By Liberation Army Soldiers in Jiangsu, the ‘Total War’ of the [KMT] Bandits Has Been Shattered.”   

This history of “total war” was the reason for my astonishment as I spotted the term in the front-page headline in the People’s Daily on February 11. I’m sure others like me who are familiar with the discourse of the CCP felt exactly the same way.

In recent years under Xi Jinping, many old Maoist terminologies have been dusted off and given new life – phrases like, “East, south, north and center, Party, government, military, society and education – the Party rules all” (东西南北中，党政军民学，党是领导一切的). At the same time, a number of former “black words” seem to have been rehabilitated and appropriated – phrases like “in the highest position” (定于一尊), once decadent and imperial but now a positive expression of the lofty power of the top leader.

The simplest explanation for this inconsistency is the fact that in the so-called “New Era,” the functionaries in charge of penning speeches and official documents are not as sensitive as they once were to the CCP’s own history, much less to world history. They have no direct experience of Mao era, nor do they necessarily have a very deep sense of the early reform era under Deng Xiaoping. This has led to the absurd situation – absurd according to the internal logic of CCP discourse – that we find black words mixed into with the red.

In the case of Xi’s G20 video teleconference speech, the “total war” once shouted out by Goebbels cannot be found. But this does not mean the term has been shut out in the cold. A separate commentary in the People’s Daily today again chants the trinity on the new priority of getting the economy humming again, asserting that “the active and orderly return of production . . . concerns comprehensive victory in the people’s war, total war and battle to contain and control the coronavirus epidemic.”  

“Total war’ is almost certainly missing from Xi Jinping’s G20 speech out of recognition of its potential sensitivity in this context. The important question now is whether and how Xi Jinping might continue to use this dangerous phrase domestically — even long after the war against the epidemic has been won.

Infectious diseases have no politics. In January 2020, through the course of the Wuhan people’s congress and the provincial people’s congress, no new coronavirus cases were reported in China. But the epidemic continued unabated – paying no heed to the political prerogatives of the Chinese Communist Party.

One of the medical facilities hardest hit by the coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan has been the Wuhan Central Hospital. On March 10, Caixin Media reported that the hospital, which has more than 4,000 employees, had at least 230 infections among its staff, the highest rate of infection among local hospitals. As of March 20, at least five of the hospital’s staff members had died of the coronavirus, including Li Wenliang (李文亮), Jiang Xueqing (江学庆), Mei Zhongming (梅仲明), Zhu Heping (朱和平) and Liu Li (刘励).

According to reports from Southern Weekly and China’s People magazine, on December 30, 2019, WeChat groups used by staff from various departments of Wuhan Central Hospital received the following information from the Wuhan City Health Commission: “We ask everyone please . . . . do not circulate at will to the outside notices and relevant information about a pneumonia of unclear origins . . . . otherwise the city health commission will subject them to severe investigation.”

On January 3, Wuhan Central Hospital called an emergency meeting of hospital department heads, emphasizing that they must “speak politics, speak discipline and speak science” (讲政治, 讲纪律, 讲科学), that they must not manufacture rumors or spread rumors, and that departments must closely monitor their own staff to ensure that strict discipline is maintained. Medical personnel were explicitly instructed not to disclose confidential information in public, and not to discuss the disease through the use of text, images or other means that might leave evidence.  

Since January, a digital copy of notes from that January 3 meeting, made by the now-deceased Jiang Xueqing, has appeared online, its authenticity verified by Chinese media. Jiang’s note include entries like: “10 discipline regulations”; “discipline in maintaining secrecy”; “no talking or discussion [without authorization.” And there is another phrase in Jiang’s notes – “speak politics.”

The unfortunate deaths of Li Wenliang, Jiang Xueqing and others owe in large part to “speaking politics.” In the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, “speaking politics” meant the muzzling of medical professionals in Wuhan, and it meant that doctors and nurses were deprived of critical protections at a time of great urgency.

Behind the rapid rise of the novel coronavirus outbreak that would overwhelm Wuhan Central Hospital and other hospitals in the city is a decades-long lineage of “speaking politics” that goes to the heart of the political culture of the Chinese Communist Party. What, then, does it mean to “speak politics”?

“Speaking” + “Politics”

The simple verb “to speak” in this context has layered meanings. Aside from the basic sense of “talking” and “saying” it bears the sense of “paying attention” and “taking into account.” Perhaps a better translation might be “prioritizing.”

In the Analects, the teachings and thoughts of Confucius, there is the phrase “speaking credibility in relationships,” or jiǎng xìn xiū mù (讲信修睦), which essentially means paying attention to or prioritizing trust, and seeking harmony. In this context, “speaking” is both similar and different in meaning to the word “grab” or “grasp” (抓) as it appears in CCP discourse, which CMP has deal with previously. Both of these words are used frequently in documents from the CCP’s Central Committee, and hang ever on the lips of Party and government officials. But “speaking” in fact implies an active choice made on the psychological level (精神层面主动选择).

“Politics,” though a simple enough word, is far more complicated when we talk about “speaking politics.” The layers entail such meanings as “distinguishing between the enemy and ourselves” (分清敌我), or “rooting out the alien [or dissident]” (铲除异己). There is also a sense of “making use of style” (发扬风格) – another complicated phrase in an of itself – and sometimes of “stressing the equitable” (讲求公正) or “[abiding by] the rules of the game” (游戏规则).

“Politics” can have meanings that are abstract and distant, or close and concrete, and these meanings of course shift with the times.

Earlier on within the discourse of the Chinese Communist Party, “speaking politics” had the sense in most cases of propaganda or oratory – speaking (or teaching) political lessons, or propagating political and economic ideas. At the same time, it bore the sense of emphasizing or prioritizing politics, which of course mean the Party’s politics.

In 1942, Mao Zedong said in his Yan’an Talks on Arts and Literature: “There are two standards for criticism in arts and literature; one is the political standard, and the other is the artistic standard.” These speeches by Mao would become the fountainhead of the notion within the Chinese Communist Party that the arts and literature must “speak politics.”

In the first decade following its launch in 1946, three years before the establishment of the PRC, uses of “speaking politics” in the People’s Daily were largely didactic, having to do with political instruction. And there was a related sense of “speaking of principles” (讲道理), which essentially meant just behaving properly. On the front page of the May 14, 1948 edition of the People’s Daily, for example, there was an article with the headline: “Examining Left-Leaning Mistakes Within the Party: Striking Others is Wrong.” A special working team had held a meeting, said the report, to discuss whether it was permissible to hit others. One old man was quoted as saying: “I used to gamble all the time, and I suffered much punishment under the old government. . . . But the Eight Route Army [of the Chinese Communist Party] has come, and I don’t hit others, and I don’t cuss, and I speak politics. Who in our village will gamble now?”

By the 1950s, “speaking politics” had already come in the arena of economics and the military to stand in opposition to the notion of specializing in doing business or in certain technologies or abilities without the proper nucleus of political consciousness. This stemmed from Mao Zedong’s notion, found in texts such as his essay “Concerning Agricultural Questions,” that one should develop expertise only on the basis of a core of correct communist ideas. In the following passage, “white” signifies capitalist ideas and impulses, set against the red of communism:

Our cadres in all walks of life must strive to be proficient in technology and business, so that they can become well-versed in their areas, both red and professional. But the idea of first professionalizing and then becoming red [turning to communist politics] is like first being white and then turning red, and this idea is wrong. Because this kind of person in fact wishes to continue being white, and to say they will later turn red is just a ruse. Right now, there are certain cadres who are red but not truly red, their ideas those of the wealthy farmer class.

Other slogans that expressed this idea in the relationship between business and politics included: “political work is the lifeline of all economic work” (政治工作是一切经济工作的生命线) and “red and professional” (又红又专), the latter found in the passage above. In this oppositional relationship between “speaking politics” and “speaking business” (讲业务) there is an undercurrent of power struggle, and this power struggle was present in the arts, in the military and in the economy.

After the Lushan Conference was held in 1959, Lin Biao, who catered to Mao and emphasized the spiritual role of people, succeeded Peng Dehuai as Minister of Defense and was appointed vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). The next year, the official commentary on National Day in the People’s Liberation Army Daily, the mouthpiece of the CMC, said: “The power of the material atomic bomb is great, but the power of the spiritual atomic bomb is greater still. This spiritual atomic bomb is the political consciousness and courage of the people.”

The term “spiritual atomic bomb” took the notion of “politics” and elevated it to the plane of strategic weaponry.

On January 12, 1965, a news story about “speaking politics” in the economic realm  was published in the People’s Daily, and this was also the first time that “speaking politics” emerged in a headline in the newspaper. The headline, somewhat shortened here, was: “Speaking Politics Must Come First in Buying and Selling.”

From the 1960s to the 1970s, the meaning of “speaking politics” can be equated with Mao Zedong Thought. During this period, which of course includes the Cultural Revolution, phrases like “giving prominence to politics” (突出政治) and “politics first” (政治第一) rise dramatically. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, these phrases came under sharp criticism, associated with Lin Biao and with the Gang of Four.

Deng Xiaoping’s priority was on business and the economy, and he famously said: “It does not matter whether a cat is black or white, but a cat that can catch mice is a good cat.” As Deng’s reform and opening policy defined a new direction for the country, Deng abandoned the Mao era slogan about “giving prominence to politics,” but he did not outright deny the important role of politics. In August 1986, Deng said during an inspection tour of the city of Tianjin: “If, alongside reform and modern science and technology, we speak politics, this will have the most power. At any time, we must speak politics.”

In the Jiang Era, “Speaking Politics” Becomes a Slogan

Consolidating power is a hard necessity for each leadership group. And after the criticizing of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four, it was no longer possible for Jiang to use Mao era slogans without incurring public resentment. In this context, the more direct phrase “speaking politics,” not over-burdened with Maoist associations, was chosen as a political slogan. The following graph show the slogans “speaking politics” (blue), “politics in command” (orange) and “giving prominence to politics” (yellow) in various eras.

On November 8, 1995, Jiang Zemin said during an inspection tour in Beijing: “When we conduct education for cadres, we must emphasize speaking study, speaking politics and speaking rightness. The entire country should act in this way, and the city of Beijing should serve a guiding role.” This speech initiated what at the time was referred to as the “three speaks education” (三讲教育). On November 25, two weeks later, “speaking politics” appeared in a headline in the People’s Daily:

This article in the People’s Daily offered an essential definition of the “three speaks, as follows:

Speaking politics includes political orientation (政治方向), political viewpoint (政治观点), political discipline (政治纪律), political discernment (政治鉴别力), political acumen (政治敏锐性) . . . . Leaders and cadres at all levels must remain sober and determined in their politics, maintaining unity in political and ideological terms with the Party of which Comrade Jiang Zemin is the core.

By this time, Deng Xiaoping was already old and frail, and in just over a year the old architect of the reform and opening policy would pass away. In order to consolidate his political power, Jiang Zemin defined and emphasized the notion of “speaking politics” as concession to his core leadership status, and obedience to his leadership.

Jiang Zemin emphasized again and again that news work (新闻工作), or journalism, must speak politics. In September 1996, Jiang made a visit to the People’s Daily, during which he said there was a need to “put the authority of leadership of news and public opinion in firmly in the hands of people who respect Marxism, respect the Party, and respect the people; news and public opinion units definitely must put adherence to the correct political orientation and adherence to correct guidance of public opinion in the primary position in all of their work.”

In the Xi Era, “Speaking Politics” is Renovated

In Xi Jinping’s so-called “New Era,” “speaking politics” has become more important than ever. In the seven years from 2013 to 2019, here is how the term “speaking politics” trended in the People’s Daily:

In January 2016, Xi Jinping said during the 6^th full session of the 18^th Central Discipline Inspection Commission: “We adhere to the [principle that] the Party must manage the Party, that the Party must be strictly governed. The investigation of the serious disciplinary and legal violations of Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong, Ling Jihua, Su Rong and others have emphasized strict political discipline and the rules, creating an atmosphere of clear-cut politics and strict discipline.” From this point on, the phrase “speaking politics with a clear banner” would make frequent appearances in the Party-run media.

In October the same year, during the 6th Plenum of the 18^th Central Committee of the CCP, Xi Jinping’s status as “core” leader was established, and on February 14 of the following year, “speaking politics” appeared in a related headline in the People’s Daily: “[We] Must Speak Politics With a Clear Banner.”

The phrase “speaking politics appeared no less than 13 times in the commentary. “Speaking politics is a fundamental requirement of a Marxist political party, our calcium supplement,” the commentary said at one point, attributing the idea to Xi Jinping. “Speaking politics concerns the future and fate of the Party,” is said at another point. And: “Speaking politics is not the repetition of old tunes, nor is it the far-left politics in the ‘Cultural Revolution’; rather, it is directed and practical.”

In terms of consolidation of power, the “New Era” has been a robust period of new slogan manufacturing, all lending fresh layers of discourse to the notion of “speaking politics.” Prominent among these slogans have been the so-called “Four Consciousnesses”—“political consciousness” (政治意识), “consciousness of the overall situation” (大局意识), “consciousness of the core” (核心意识) and “compliance consciousness” (看齐意识)—and the “two protections” (protection of the core leadership status of Xi Jinping, and of the centralized leadership of the Chinese Communist Party).

In his comprehensive review of Chinese political discourse in 2019, Qian Gang looked at how local Party media and military media (军报) used the “four consciousnesses “ and the “two protections,” signaling their loyalty to Xi Jinping and the Party. For example, on November 22, 2019, the local Wulong News in Chongqing used the phrase “respecting the core, protecting the core, complying with the core, and following the core” (忠诚核心、维护核心、看齐核心、追随核心). Jiangxi province’s official Gan’nan Daily wrote on the same day of “protecting the core, supporting the core, and following the core both in our hearts and in our outward actions” (将维护核心、拥戴核心、追随核心内化于心、外化于行).

At the 4^th Plenum in October 2019, Politburo Member Ding Xuexiang wrote in the People’s Daily:

The ‘Two Protections’ have a clear meaning and demand, to protect the core status of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and the object is General Secretary Xi Jinping and no other person; to protect the centralized and unified authority of the Central Committee of the CCP, the object being the Party’s Central Committee and no other organization. The authority of the CCP Central Committee determines the authority of Party organizations at all levels, and the authority of Party organizations at all levels comes from the authority of the CCP Central Committee. The ‘Two Protections’ can neither be applied layer by layer nor extended at will.  

This passage makes it very explicit what is meant by “speaking politics.” As Ding Xuexiang lays out the essentials, there can be no doubt whatsoever.

As the Epidemic Raged, What Did “Speaking Politics” Mean?

2020 was meant to be China’s year of victory in its war against poverty and the building of a “moderately well-off society.” Early on in the year, before the coronavirus epidemic was pushed into the spotlight, it was clear that this supposed victory was the centerpiece of the Party’s propaganda strategy.

In Wuhan, which would soon become the epicenter of the epidemic, the Changjiang Daily, the official newspaper of the municipal Party committee, was not to be outdone in its declaration of victory in the war on poverty. A front-page article in  the paper declared that Wuhan would become “China’s Fifth City” after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

In early 2020, as the coronavirus outbreak spread, what took precedence in the politics of Wuhan and Hubei province? The priorities were the celebration of the annual Spring Festival, the holding of the city and provincial sessions of the people’s congress and political consultative conference, the touting of the Party’s victories in fighting poverty, and the “Two Protections.” All of these were ultimately about the “Four Consciousnesses,” and as such were about the core status of Xi Jinping and the leadership of the Central Committee.

On January 10, the Changjiang Daily, Wuhan’s official Party newspaper, published the speech given by the city’s top leader, Ma Guoqiang (马国强) to the local people’s congress. In his speech, Ma emphasized the need to “speak politics with a clear banner.” Nowhere in his speech did Ma mention the coronavirus outbreak, which at that point was still not being dealt with openly in China.

On February 15, not long after Ma Guoqiang’s replacement as Wuhan’s top leader, the Changjiang Daily ran a report about a study session led by the city’s new top leader, Wang Zhonglin, that again emphasized “speaking politics,” though by his point the response to the coronavirus epidemic was an open agenda, having redirected the focus of news and propaganda efforts since Xi Jinping’s first public comment on the epidemic on January 20. The Changjiang Daily piece read: “Under the provincial Party leadership of session leader Comrade Ying Yong, and under the guidance of session leader Comrade Wang Zhonglin of the city’s Party Committee, [the study session] spoke politics, attended to the general situation and abided by the rules.”

“Speaking politics” has had varying meanings at different times in China’s history. In the early days of 2020, as the virus silently spread, “speaking politics” meant “not talking haphazardly” (不准到处乱讲). Once the response effort had actually begun after January 20, “speaking politics” meant shutting down cities, closing off roads and building emergency field hospitals like Huoshenshan. At the most challenging point of the response effort, “speaking politics” meant carrying out stability preservation in restive residential districts – like the one in Wuhan that heckled Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan during her inspection tour on March 6. In the most recent stage of China’s response, “speaking politics” is about being tough on restricting international arrivals who might reintroduce the virus, and about getting economic activity going again.

“Speaking politics” has often meant rushing into disaster – and many, like Doctor Li Wenliang (李文亮) and Doctor Jiang Xueqing (江学庆), have paid with their lives for its expedient focus on the shifting interests of the CCP leadership. So long as China fails to face the painful lessons of “speaking politics” and its privilege over humanity and conscience, its flag will continue to fly high, drawing attention away from real threats and dangers.

This month, as China has moved into a new phase in the fight against the novel coronavirus epidemic, and as CCP leaders have been keen to claim victory, the question of gratitude has become a contentious one – both inside and outside China. On March 4, a commentary from Xinhua News Agency balked at the suggestion from a host on Fox News that China, as the origin of the virus, owes the world an apology.

Recently, a view is being promoted that China owes the world an apology. This is extremely absurd. China has made massive sacrifices in fighting the coronavirus epidemic, and paid an immense economic cost to cut off the path of transmission of the coronavirus. No other country has made such huge sacrifices and put in so much effort in the midst of this epidemic.

The commentary then turned the tables, suggesting that the world in fact owes China a debt of gratitude. “Right now we should firmly say that America owes China an apology,” it said, “and the world owes China thanks.”

Gratitude now figures heavily in messaging from state media on the coronavirus epidemic. On March 16, following the arrival in Italy of a Chinese shipment of medical supplies and personnel, the People’s Daily ran a story called, “Thanks to the Special Team From China,” which reported contested claims that Italians in one residential area in Italy had played the Chinese national anthem and shouted “Grazie Cina!” – Thank you, China! – from their apartments.

One Italian site convincingly cast doubt late last week on the authenticity of related videos posted by top officials from China’s foreign ministry, including spokeswoman Hua Chunying, by locating sources of footage used to create the Chinese video. Below, for example, is a screenshot from the video playing on Hua Chunying’s Twitter account, alongside a screenshot from the original video – of Italians applauding Italians – from Italy’s AGTW.

The question of gratitude was also the source this month of controversy inside China. On March 7, on the eve of Xi Jinping’s visit to Wuhan, Wang Zhonglin (王忠林), who has served as the top leader of Wuhan for just over a month, announced that he planned to carry out “gratitude education” (感恩教育) for residents of the city, who should “thank the General Secretary, and thank the Chinese Communist Party.”

As soon as news of this statement from Wang came out, it was met with a wave of anger. Journalist Chu Chaoxin (褚朝新) wrote angrily: “No one with a modicum of decency would demand that the Wuhan people, just recovering from shock, would show their gratitude.” Wang Zhonglin’s talk of thanks brought a wave of such recriminations that continued for an entire day before it was completely brought under control. As the image below shows, the original post about Wang’s remarks from “Wuhan Release,” the official WeChat account of the local government, was deleted within hours in the face of the backlash.

For many Chinese speakers outside mainland China, in Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, “gratitude” is a plain and ordinary word for a commonplace sentiment. But when did “gratitude” become transformed into a political slogan in mainland China?

Tracing the Spread of “Gratitude”

Searching for the origins of discourse is not entirely unlike the work of investigating the origins of an epidemic. The use of databases and search engines can help us to trace the paths that certain words and phrases have taken through history.

In ancient Chinese, there is a word “gratitude” that is used in such idiomatic expressions as “being grateful for a kindness” (感恩戴德). The object of gratitude in most of these uses, judging from my search of Taiwan’s Scripta Sinica database, is the sovereign ruler (君王). In the newspapers of the Republican period, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the word “gratitude” appears in many instances having to do with religion, with talk of “Thanksgiving Day” (感恩节) and so on (searching Shanghai’s BKSY database). And newspapers can be located in Taiwan that continue with uses of “gratitude” that accord more or less with either the traditional Chinese sense or the Western religious sense, with a number of instances of “gratitude” to leaders also appearing – such as after the death of Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan’s Infolinker database).

Now, I grew up “drinking red ink,” and I know by heart practically every red slogan of the Chinese Communist Party that has ever been. But I don’t have any strong recollection of “gratitude” being a part of this tradition. So I had to do my homework, and look back through the People’s Daily database to see what I could find. What I found was that since the newspaper’s launch in 1946, up to the end of the Cultural Revolution and the start of the reform and opening era in 1978, a period of 32 years in the Mao Zedong era, the word “gratitude” appeared in just 163 articles – less than once every two months, or about five per year.

This pie graph shows four different contexts for the word “gratitude” in the People’s Daily throughout this period:

“Being grateful for a kindness” (感恩戴德) and “endless gratitude” (感恩不尽) are both phrases that the Chinese Communist Party views as having shades of feudalism. Meanwhile, “Thanksgiving Day”(感恩节), being a Western term, is associated with imperialism and capitalism. These uses account for 84 percent of the total.

The “other” uses, seen in yellow, aside from a very few that are positive uses – for example, the “gratitude” of the people after Communist forces occupied former Kuomintang territory), and one use for a place name, “Gratitude County” (感恩县) – all have negative connotations. For example, they might deride the “gratitude” that the running dogs of imperialism show to their masters, and so on.

In the Mao era, “gratitude” was a word belonging to the sphere of feudalism and capitalism. But even as “gratitude” was seldom used, and rarely positive, the headlines were full of slogans like, “Our gratitude to Mao Zedong is higher than the sky” (毛主席的恩情比天高), “Thanks to Chairman Mao!” (感谢毛主席), “Thanks to the Chinese Communist Party!” and so on.

In the Deng Xiaoping era, the words “gratitude” and “thanks” in reference to leaders or the government was quite rate in the People’s Daily. In 1981, the Chinese Communist Party issued mild criticisms of Mao Zedong, passing its Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the PRC. The People’s Daily ran an article called “Feelings of Gratitude Cannot Replace Scientific Analysis (感恩之情不能代替科学分析) that said, using the sense of “leader,” or lingxiu (领袖) that Xi Jinping has now claimed for himself: “If we begin from a sense of gratitude, we are unable to accurately recognize the historical role of the leader, but can easily confuse the distinction between respect for the leader and the cults of personality around Lin Biao and the ‘Gang of Four.’”

Deng Xiaoping was wary of personality cults. It goes without saying that while he was in power we did not see phrases like “showing gratitude to Deng Xiaoping” (感恩邓小平). But even expressions of “thanks” (感谢) towards Deng were rare. One example occurred in 1987, when a Tibetan monk from Qinhai was quoted as saying in the People’s Daily: “[We offer] thanks for such a good policy made for us by Grandpa Deng.” There have certainly been instances where Chinese made genuine gestures of thanks to Deng Xiaoping. The most obvious example was perhaps during the National Day march in 1984, when students hung out a banner that read, “Hello, Xiaoping!” (小平您好).

“Gratitude” Heats Up in the Hu Era

If we look at how the word “gratitude” trends in the People’s Daily through the Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, this is the pattern we see, where orange represents Deng, yellow Jiang and green Hu:

In the Deng and Jiang eras we find the word “gratitude” clearly in evidence. As China opened up to the world, “Thanksgiving Day” became an objective noun, without negative connotations. There was even coverage during Jiang Zemin’s visit to the United States of American workers introducing the customs of American Thanksgiving.

But the real increase in use of the word “gratitude” came in the Hu Jintao era. In the 10 years of Hu Jintao’s tenure in office, there were a total of 1,639 articles in the People’s Daily including the word “gratitude.” In the final year of Hu’s tenure, there were 320 articles, making the word a “hot” term according to the CMP heat scale for political discourse.

Some observers have said that the transition from Mao to Deng, Jiang and Hu marked a steady progression from “strongman politics” (强人政治) to “ordinary man politics” (常人政治). As Hu Jintao introduced his slogan “harmonious society” (和谐社会), the word “gratitude” heated up in the state media. For example, one article in September 2006 said: “Always be grateful, and there will be more harmony and less division between people; more unity and less friction; more understanding and less complaining.”

This was the first time in the Hu Jintao era that the world “gratitude” appeared in a headline in the People’s Daily. At the time the whole country was in the midst of its fight against SARS, and the author of the piece praised science and technology workers and health workers, saying: “Disaster reminds each and every one of us that we must have a grateful heart.” “It’s only when you have a grateful heart that you can better understand respect. Respect life, respect labor, and respect creativity.”

In the Hu Jintao era, “gratitude” had many meanings in the media. These included: the gratitude felt by people in disaster areas for disaster relief workers (2006 being the 30-year anniversary of the Tangshan Earthquake); the gratitude felt by poor Chinese in the countryside for relatives that helped them; gratitude children felt for their parents, and so on. Below is a report in the People’s Daily from December 2006 about two sons who built a cart called “The Gratitude Express” (感恩号) to take their elderly mother traveling.

In 2005, the city of Shanghai added a clause to its High School Regulations about “learning to be grateful” (学会感恩). One commentator wrote in response to this change that this was a “required course for life,” and that a sense of gratitude was ”the soil in which social responsibility and patriotic hearts are nurtured.”

During this period, in the early Hu Jintao era, we also begin to see more frequent use of “gratitude” in the context of institutions, so that we begin to see “gratitude toward the organization” (感恩组织), and “gratitude toward the Chinese Communist Party” (感恩共产党). In 2010, the United Front Work Department organized a “gratitude movement” for private enterprises in which companies were encouraged to “show gratitude toward the Party, gratitude toward the nation, and gratitude toward the people.”

From this point, as we approach the Xi era, it seems, the word “gratitude” takes on a clear political coloring and association with the Chinese Communist Party. But in the Hu Jintao era, there was no giving of gratitude toward the “leader.” In fact, this was impossible, because Hu Jintao, quite unlike his successor, Xi Jinping, was never designated as “the core” (核心). All of this would change by 2013.

Gratitude for the General Secretary

As Xi Jinping came to power, he launched a concerted campaign against corruption in the CCP’s ranks. In some cases, officials were criticized for corrupt ways of thinking about the their relationship to others in society, and we see the notion of “gratitude” used in a critical way in this context. In 2013, an article in the People’s Daily called “Being Alert to Erroneous Concepts of Gratitude” (警惕错误的感恩观) said that “under the long-term influence of feudal ideas and [incomplete] social development, certain erroneous concepts of gratitude have permeated relations between the Party and cadres, and between different groups.” It continued: “Certain leading cadres regard the gratitude given by the masses for favorable policies by the Party and the government as the fruit of their own labors.”

From 2013 to 2017, during Xi Jinping’s first -five-year term, there were 1,164 articles in the People’s Daily using the word “gratitude,” showing a marked increase from the Hu Jintao era. Before 2015, however, while the phrase “gratitude toward the Party” (感恩党) could be found, expressions of gratitude toward the person of the leader himself did not occur.

On July 23, 2016, the People’s Daily ran a long report on the front page about Xi Jinping’s inspection tour of Ningxia. The article said that “the prosperous people who had thrown off poverty expressed gratitude toward their guide Xi Jinping.” This was a precursor to a phrase we see now, “gratitude for the General Secretary.”

Three months after this report, Xi Jinping took an important step further up the ladder of personal power.

At the 6^th Plenum of the 18^th Central Committee of the CCP, Xi Jinping was formally designated as “the core” (党的核心). The emergence of a new CCP phrase, “the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core” (以习近平同志为核心的党中央) resulted in a reshuffling of political discourse, the upshot being a tidal wave of adulation for Xi Jinping before and after the 19^th National Congress of the CCP in the fall of 2017.

Here is the front page of Xinjiang’s Aksu Daily, the official CCP mouthpiece in Aksu prefecture. The headline tells us about a disabled girl who wrote a poem “to express gratitude to the General Secretary.”

On September 17, 2017, in a huge special report ahead of the 19^th National Congress, Guizhou Party Secretary Sun Zhigang (孙志刚) became the first top provincial official in the People’s Daily to shout the slogan “Thanks to General Secretary Xi Jinping” (感恩习近平总书记). Not to be outdone, many top officials at that time, including Wu Yingjie (吴英杰), Party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, expressed their “gratitude” toward Xi in this way during the 19^th National Congress – and this brought a notable rise in the phrase in the People’s Daily.

This is the front page of the November 9, 2017, edition of Guizhou’s Qianxinan Daily. Notice the wall behind the women in their colorful garb. There is a portrait of the general secretary, along with a red caption that reads: “Great Leader General Secretary Xi Jinping” (伟大领袖习近平总书记). This is a level of elevation of Xi we rarely see even now, putting him squarely on par with Mao Zedong. The headline reads: “The sound of gratitude crosses the river.”

The portrait actually appeared on the newspaper’s front page the very next day:

This was the triumphal atmosphere that spawned the phrase “gratitude for the general secretary.” In 2018, the Party leadership actually moved to regulate the tide of enthusiastic praise for Xi Jinping, which risked going overboard. Qianxinan Daily quietly removed the November 9, 2017, front page from its online archive, replacing it with a fake front page. The Central Committee issued a notice specifying that the phrase “cherished by the whole Party, loved and respected by the people, and worthy of the title” (全党拥护，人民爱戴，当之无愧) could be used to praise Xi Jinping. But even this phrase fell out of use rather quickly. What did remain, and continue to flourish, was the phrase “gratitude to the general secretary,” which we can find in many articles in state media. 

In Guizhou, Party media chanted the slogan, “Forging ahead with gratitude” (牢记嘱托感恩奋进), and Party secretary Sun Zhigang managed to say in his report to the provincial people’s congress in 2019: “General Secretary Xi Jinping’s gratitude for the people of Guizhou is heavy as a mountain, and the people of Guizhou will forever be thankful to the General Secretary!” In the city of Ningde, in Fujian province, the Party Committee stated in its mouthpiece newspaper, the Mindong Daily, in January 2019: “[We] must in our ideology express gratitude to General Secretary Xi Jinping, love and respect General Secretary Xi Jinping, moving with the General Secretary in our actions, and protecting the General Secretary.”

In his “Spring Address” early this year, Zhangjiakou’s Party secretary, Hui Jian (回建) “express[ed] gratitude to General Secretary Xi Jinping for the unprecedented opportunities he has brought to Zhangjiakou.” Also in January, Liu Ning (刘宁), the governor of Qinghai province, wrote the phrase “showing gratitude to General Secretary Xi Jinping” into his government work report. And a report from the standing committee of the municipal CCP committee in Xi’an said in January that “[we must] always remember and always have gratitude toward General Secretary Xi Jinping for his care and concern for Xi’an.”

Through January this year, as the coronavirus outbreak exploded in China, and the entire country was prioritizing the fight against the epidemic, the People’s Daily stubbornly maintained its focus on the anti-poverty series it had already planned for the year. And twice these special reports spoke of having “gratitude for the General Secretary.”

This larger political context, and the cult of gratitude emerging around Xi Jinping, is crucial to understanding why Wang Zhonglin made his remarks about the need for “gratitude education” in Wuhan.

But in fact, Wang Zhonglin’s idea was not at all new. Others blazed this trail after the 19^th National Congress of the CCP. Here is a report from Chun’an County in Zhejiang province. The headline reads: “Our county carries out ‘gratitude for the general secretary, advancing bravely in the new era’ study and propaganda education campaign” (我县开展”感恩书记, 奋进新时代”专题学习宣传教育活动). 

Wang Zhonglin was merely following what has become mainstream direction on managing public opinion since the 6th Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee back in 2016. He was reading from the same hymnbook as other CCP officials, with the same lyrics, his thought being to express his loyalty to the General Secretary. His failure was in misapprehending the current state of things in China. As Chinese face life and death concerns and harbor deep resentment over early missteps in dealing with the epidemic, their nerves are especially sensitive to the way leaders seem so keen on showering themselves with tributes and praise.

The evolution of “gratitude” can tell us a great deal about political evolution in China today. It can tell us, we might also say, about the evolution and spread of the political virus that has infected the body of the Chinese Communist Party.

Like me, Xi Jinping grew up “drinking red ink.” Since coming to power, he has revived many red terms from the Mao era, including phrases like: “East, south, north and center, Party, government, military, society and education – the Party rules all” (东西南北中，党政军民学，党是领导一切的). But in Xi’s new era, “gratitude,” that black word once associated with feudalism and capitalism, has become a bona fide red political slogan – and this is something entirely new.

(Additional research for this article was contributed by David Bandurski.)

China’s anti-corruption agency has announced the results of its investigation into the summoning and formal reprimand by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau of Li Wenliang, the 34-year-old Wuhan doctor who tried to warn colleagues in December about the deadly coronavirus outbreak in his city. The investigation was a response to Dr. Li’s death from the coronavirus on February 7, which prompted a wave of public anger and turned Li into a symbol for many of personal and professional courage in the face of a callous and unaccountable system.

The message from China’s leadership today: Li Wenliang belongs to the Chinese Communist Party, and any attempt to portray him as a folk hero or oppositional figure is unacceptable.

The notice released today by China’s National Supervisory Commission consists almost entirely in a sequential recounting of events already generally known, including Li’s post to WeChat, his questioning by local police at the substation on Zhongnan Road (中南路派出所), and his subsequent contraction of the coronavirus and death.

The notice ends with a brief note about the conduct of police that urges further action at the discretion of local authorities: “Concerning the issuing of an improper letter of reprimand by the Zhongnan Road Substation [of the PSB] and irregular law enforcement procedures, the investigation team has already advised that Wuhan municipal supervisory authorities in Hubei province carry out supervision and correct this matter, urging public security organs to revoke the letter of reprimand and hold the relevant personnel accountable, promptly announcing the results to the public.”

While the release acknowledges here that the actions of local police were “irregular” and “improper,” it avoids addressing this core question further.

Perhaps more significant than the release of the investigation findings is a separate news release from the official Xinhua News Agency that includes a Q&A with the National Supervisory Commission on its findings. That release takes on a far more antagonistic tone, portraying the so-called “Li Wenliang incident” in early February as an attempt by “hostile forces” to undermine the Party’s leadership.

The Q&A release clearly seeks to emphasize Dr. Li’s status as both a member of the Chinese Communist Party and as one among many medical professionals who have sacrificed in the midst of a Party-led effort to control the epidemic. Responding to the question of what “social role” was played by Li Wenliang’s posting of information to colleagues through WeChat in late December, the National Supervisory Commission states:

Colleagues told [the team] that Li Wenliang was a cheerful person who enjoyed helping others, and a member of the Chinese Communist Party. [He was] a responsible and hardworking doctor. He also said while under treatment in the hospital that, “After I recover I want to return quickly to the front lines, continuing to see patients.” [He] demonstrated dedication as a medical professional. In sharing and releasing relevant information, Li Wenliang’s idea was to warn his classmates and colleagues to taken preventive measures, and after the information was forwarded, it aroused attention from society and objectively served to promote attention to the epidemic and strengthen prevention and control. On March 4, 2020, the National Health Commission and other departments decided to commend Dr. Li Wenliang as one of a number of advanced individuals (先进个人) in the national health and health system for the prevention and control of the coronavirus epidemic. This is a recognition and affirmation of Dr. Li Wenliang’s work.

After a general statement about the immense sacrifices made by healthcare professionals since the epidemic began, the report notes blandly: “Dr. Li Wenliang is one member of the medical team who fought heroically and made contributions and sacrifices in the epidemic control effort.”

The most important message comes at the end of the Xinhua release:

It should be recognized that certain hostile forces, in order to attack the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government, gave Dr. Li Wenliang the label of an anti-system “hero” and “awakener” (觉醒者). This is entirely against the facts. Li Wenliang is a Communist Party member, not a so-called “anti-institutional figure” (反体制人物), and those forces with ulterior motives who wish to fan the fires, deceive people and stir up emotions in society are doomed to fail.

“Hostile forces” is a phrase frequently invoked by the Chinese Communist Party to paint internal social forces, including unwanted criticism of the government, as a plot by often unspecified enemies.

In this case, the act of claiming Li Wenliang as the Party’s own is reminiscent of the leadership’s treatment of the centenary of the birth of pro-reform CCP leader Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦) in 2015, which avoided mention of Hu’s reform credentials. Internal propaganda instructions at the time emphasized the need to stay closely to the notion of “the Party’s Yaobang” (党的耀邦).