Today, October 16, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping opened the 20th National Congress by delivering his political report, or zhengzhi baogao (政治報告), in which he praised the leadership of the Party and outlined key priorities for the next five years.
The entire process of reading the report lasted for nearly two hours, during which the hundreds of delegates present dutifully scribbled on their copies and, when prompted, offered waves of applause.
But in fact, this version of the political report was at least one-third shorter than the full report, as commentators on state media revealed shortly after the broadcast. Reading the full report would have required perhaps another hour of performance by Xi Jinping, which planners possibly felt would have been too taxing on the country’s top leader, now 69.
Instead, Xi did what is called “picking out the key points,” or tiao zhongdian (挑重点). At points during his delivery, Xi paused to clear his throat, cough, or take short drinks of tea or water, the cup clinking as he returned it to the saucer.
The last time that there was such a substantial difference between the delivered report and the full-text report was back at the 16th National Congress of the CCP in 2002, when the political report was delivered by Jiang Zemin, then 76.
For the convenience of those wishing to study the full-text version of the 2022 political report more closely, we offer the following copies for download — the short version (delivered by Xi today) followed by the longer version.
