A report released by Chinese state media on December 29 claims that the unwieldy official phrase for the governing ideology of the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has won “high recognition from the international community.” The assertion is absurd on its face. But lest this ruse pass unchallenged — however transparent it may seem — it’s worth being explicit about why.

Conducted by the Global Times Research Institute, a Chinese Communist Party-run think-tank directly under the state-run Global Times newspaper (under the CCP’s flagship People’s Daily), the “2025 Global Survey on Impression and Understanding of China” (2025年中国国际形象全球调查报告) claims to have surveyed approximately 51,700 people across 46 countries from August to October 2025. The survey was heavily promoted in China’s state media nationwide, with a related readout from the official newswire Xinhua circulated extensively. It was also shared across social media by Chinese official accounts, including the Facebook account of the office of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong.

According to follow-up reports by the Global Times and other state media, the survey “selected some important concepts from Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想), and asked foreign respondents for their opinions. Nearly 80 percent reportedly endorsed “building a community with a shared future for mankind” (构建人类命运共同体) and the even more mystifying “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets” (绿水青山就是金山银山), the Global Times reports. More than 70 percent approve of “comprehensively governing the party with strict discipline” (全面从严治党), “comprehensive deepening of reform” (全面深化改革), and “putting people at the center” (以人民为中心) — all concepts highly specific to the CCP political context and likely to draw blank stares from all but specialists in PRC political discourse.

How did the Global Times survey team manage to obtain such positive general feedback on what are decidedly political obscurities?

Reports from state media explicitly state that the survey “introduced” certain policies before soliciting opinions, suggesting the possibility — a certainty once you understand how propaganda works in China — that they were explained in positive terms before the survey questions were dropped. The report also claims that 39 percent of respondents favor China over the United States (which polls at 26 percent), a finding that runs counter most independent international polling on China.

The Global Times promotes the survey as having sparked “heated discussion among Chinese and foreign scholars” (中外学者热议). A follow-up report by the newspaper features interviews with figures including former Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and Pakistani scholar Muhammad Asif Noor, who offer effusive praise for Xi Jinping Thought and China’s global role.

Yet despite this entirely unregarded storm in the Party’s own teapot, the full text of the survey — including its complete methodology, question wording, and raw data — has not been released. In English, only a smattering of related news briefs and videos, all stemming from the Global Times, are available.

The problem should be painfully obvious. These phrases are virtually unknown outside China, and even inside China are poorly understood by most ordinary Chinese. “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” is a 19-character ideological construct that most people globally could not pronounce, much less define. The wave of reports about the as-yet-unreleased survey provide no evidence that respondents had any inkling they were evaluating components of this ideology, or that they understood what these concepts actually mean in Chinese political discourse.

The real story here is not what the survey reveals about global opinion on China and its governing ideology. Rather, it is what the survey demonstrates about how state-run media and organizations in the country use polling to give a patina of legitimacy to the pre-cooked propaganda of the Chinese leadership. Sometimes even the patently obvious needs to be stated explicitly.