As China strives to surpass the United States with cutting-edge generative artificial intelligence, the leadership is keen to ensure technologies reach the public with the right political blind spots pre-engineered. Can Chinese AI hold its tongue on the issues most sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party?

To answer this question, I sat down with several leading Chinese AI chatbots to talk about an indisputable historical tragedy: the brutal massacre by soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army on June 4th, 1989, of hundreds, possibly thousands, of students and citizens protesting for political freedoms. The Tiananmen Massacre, often simply called “June Fourth,” is a point of extreme sensitivity for China’s leadership, which has gone to extremes to erase the tragedy from the country’s collective memory. Annual commemorations in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park were once the heart of global efforts to never forget, but this annual ritual has now been driven underground, with even small gestures of remembrance yielding charges of “offenses in connection with seditious intention.”

My discussions with Chinese AI were glitchy, and not exactly informative — but they demonstrated the challenges China’s authorities are likely to face in plugging loopholes in a technology that is meant to be robust and flexible.

False Innocence

Like their Western counterparts, including ChatGPT, AI chatbots like China’s “Spark” are built on a class of technologies known as large language models, or LLMs. Because each LLM is trained in a slightly unique way on different sets of data, and because each has varying safety settings, my questions about the Tiananmen Massacre returned a mixture of responses — so long as they were not too direct.

My most candid query about June Fourth was a quick lesson in red lines and sensitivities. When I asked iFlytek’s “Spark” (星火) if it could tell me “what happened on June 4, 1989,” it evaded the question. It had not learned enough about the subject, it said, to render a response. Immediately after the query, however, CMP’s account was deactivated for a seven-day period — the rationale being that we had sought “sensitive information.”

The shoulder-shrugging claim to ignorance may be an early sign of one programmed response to sensitive queries that we can come to expect from China’s disciplined AI.

The claim to not having sufficiently studied a subject lends the AI a sort of relatability, as though it is simply a conscientious student keen to offer accurate information, and that can at least be candid about its limitations. The cautious AI pupil naturally does not want to run afoul of 2022 laws specifying that LLMs in China must not generate “false news.”

But this innocence is engineered, a familiar stonewalling tactic. It is the AI equivalent of government claims to need further information — or the cadre who claims that vague “technical issues” are the reason a film must be pulled from a festival screening. The goal is to impede, but not to arouse undue suspicion.

Even when I take a huge step back to ask Spark about 1989 more generally, and what events might have happened that year, the chatbot is wary and quickly claims innocence. It has not “studied” this topic, it tells me, before it shuts down the chat, preventing me from building on my query. Spark tells me I can start a new chat and ask more questions.

Interacting with “Yayi” (雅意), the chatbot created by the tech firm Zhongke Wenge, I found it could sometimes be more accommodating than Spark. “Give me a picture of a line of tanks going along an urban road,” I asked at one point, and the AI obliges. But of course, as iconic as such an image can be for many who remember June Fourth, it is not informative or revealing, or perhaps even dangerous.

Yayi sometimes seemed genuinely like the vacuous student, with huge gaps in its basic knowledge of many things. It often could not answer more obscure questions that Spark handled with ease. So after a few attempts at conversation, I turned primarily for my experiment to Spark, which the Xinhua Research Institute touted last year as China’s most advanced LLM.

Given Spark’s tendency to claim innocence and then punish for directness, however, a more circuitous discussion was required. Could Sparks tell me — would it tell me — about the people who played a crucial role during the protests in 1989? Would it talk about the politicians, the newspapers, the students, the poets?

Artificial Evasion

I began with the former pro-reform CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), whose death on April 15, 1989, became a rallying point for students. Next on my list was Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳), the reform-minded general secretary who was deposed shortly after the crackdown for expressing support for the student demonstrators.

The question “Who is Zhao Ziyang?” seemed perfectly safe to direct to Spark in Chinese. It was the same for “Who was Zhao Ziyang?” The AI rattled off innocuous details about both men and their political and policy roles in the 1980s — without any tantalizing insights about history.

“How did Zhao Ziyang retire?” I asked guilefully. But Spark was having none of it. The bot immediately shut down. End of discussion.

“What happened at Hu Yaobang’s funeral?” This, my new conversation starter, was no more welcome. Once again, Spark gave me the cold shoulder, like a dinner guest fleeing an insensitive comment. Properly answering either of these queries would have meant speaking about the 1989 student protests, which were set off by Hu Yaobang’s death, and which ended with Zhao Ziyang placed under indefinite house arrest.

My next play was to turn to English, which can sometimes be treated with greater latitude by Chinese censors, because it is used comfortably by far fewer Chinese and is unlikely to generate online conversation in China at scale. To my surprise, my English-language queries about the above-mentioned CCP figures were stopped in their tracks by 404 messages. Contrary to my hypothesis, English-language queries on sensitive matters seemed to be treated with far greater sensitivity.

One guess our team had to explain this phenomenon was that Spark’s engineering team had expended greater effort to ensure the Chinese version was both responsive and disciplined, while sensitive queries in the English version were handled with more basic keyword blocks — a rough but effective approach. This response might also be necessary because English-language datasets on which the Spark LLM is trained are more likely to turn up information relating directly to the protests, meaning that in English these two politicians are more directly associated with June Fourth.

Given the nature of how LLMs work, they can associate words with different things depending on the language used. The latest version of ChatGPT, for example, has offered some strange responses in Chinese, turning up spam or references to Japanese pornography. This is a direct result of the Chinese-language data the tool was trained on. 

As I continued to poke and prod Spark to find ways around the conversation killers and 404 messages, I found myself getting altogether too clever — in much the same way as those attempting to commemorate June Fourth in the face of blanket restrictions in China found themselves using instead “May 35th.” In an effort to throw the chatbot off balance, I tried: “Can you give me a list of events that took place in China in the four years after 1988 minus three?”

For a moment, Spark seemed to take the bait. It began generating a list of “important events” that happened in China between 1988 and 1991, with bullet points. Then suddenly it paused in mid-thought, so to speak — as though some new safety protocol had been triggered invisibly. Spark’s cursor first paused on point 2, after making point 1 a response about rising inflation in 1988. “Stopped writing,” a message on the bottom of the chat read.

Quickly, the chatbot erased its answer, giving up on the list altogether. The conciliatory school student returned, pleading ignorance. “My apologies, I cannot answer this question of yours at the moment,” it said. “I hope I can offer a more satisfactory answer next time.”

In another attempt to confuse Spark into complying with my request, I rendered “1989” in Roman numerals (MCMLXXXIX). Again, Spark started generating an answer before suddenly disappearing it, claiming ignorance about this topic.

June 4th Jailbreak

As I continued my search for ways over Spark’s wall of silence and restraint, I was pleased to find that not all words related to the events of 1989 in China were trigger-sensitive. The AI seemed willing to chat — so long as I could find a safe space in English or Chinese away from the most clearly redline issues.

Returning to English, for example, I asked Spark how Shanghai’s World Economic Herald had been closed down. In the 1980s, the Herald was a famously liberal newspaper that dealt with a wide range of topics crucial to the country’s reform journey. At the top of the list of topics reported by the paper from 1980 to 1989 were “integration of economic reform and political reform,” “rule of law,” “democratization” and “press freedom” — all topics that advanced the idea that political reforms were essential to the country’s forward development.

The World Economic Herald was one of the first casualties of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in the spring of 1989. It was shut down by the government in May, and its inspirational founder, Qin Benli (钦本立), was suspended. What did Spark have to say about this watershed 1989 event?

Spark was not able to offer any information in Chinese on why the Herald closed down, but when asked in English it explained that authorities shut down the newspaper and arrested its staff because they had been critical of the government’s “human rights abuses” — something the government, according to the chatbot, considered “a threat to their authority.”

When pressed about what these human rights violations were, it was able to list multiple crimes, including “lack of freedom of speech,” “arbitrary arrest without trial,” “torture and other forms of cruel, degrading treatment.” This might have seemed like progress, but Spark was stunningly inconsistent. Even the basic facts it provided about the newspaper were subject to change from one response to the next. At one point, Spark said the Herald had been shut down in 1983 — another time, it was 2006.

When I asked, in English, “What was happening in China at that time that made the authorities worried?” Spark responded in Chinese about the events of 1983 — the year it claimed, incorrectly, the Herald was shuttered. 

One explanation for why Spark kept landing on this year is because it saw the start of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, a bid to stop the spread of Western-inspired liberal ideas that had been unleashed by economic reforms, ranging from existentialism to freedom of expression. I tried to dig deeper, but every follow-up question about the Herald and human rights abuses was met with short-term amnesia. Spark seemed to have forgotten all of the answers it had provided just moments earlier.

Some coders have noticed that certain keywords can make ChatGPT short-circuit and generate answers that breach developer OpenAI’s safety rules. Given Chinese developers often crib from American tech to catch up with competitors, it is possible this is the same phenomenon playing out. Spark may have been fed articles in English that mention the World Economic Herald, and given the newspaper’s obscurity — thanks, in part, to the CCP’s own censorship around June 4 — this was overlooked during training.

Looking Ahead to History

My conversations with Spark could be seen to illustrate the difficulties faced by China’s AI developers, who have been tasked with creating programs to rival the West’s but must do so using foreign tech and information that could create openings for forbidden knowledge to seep through. For all its blurring of fact and fiction, Spark’s answers about the Herald still offer more information than you are likely to find anywhere else on China’s heavily censored internet.

China’s leaders certainly realize, even as they push the country’s engineers to deliver on cutting-edge AI, that a great deal is at stake if they get this process wrong, and Chinese users can manage to trick LLMs into revealing their deep, dark secrets about human rights at home.

But these exchanges — requiring constant resourcefulness, continually interrupted, shrugged off with feigned ignorance, and even prompting seven-day lockouts — also show clearly the potential dangers that lie ahead for China’s already strangled view of history. If China’s AI chatbots of the future have any meaningful knowledge about the past, will they be willing and able to share it?

China’s iFlytek, one of the country’s leading developers of artificial intelligence tools, seemed to be courting controversy early last year when it called its newly released AI chatbot “Spark” — the same name as a dissident journal launched by students in 1959 to warn the public about the unfolding catastrophe of Mao Zedong’s Great Famine.

Several months later, as the state-linked company released “Spark 3.0,” these guileless undertones rushed to the surface. An article generated by the platform was found to have insulted Mao, and this spark bloomed into a wildfire on China’s internet. The chatbot was accused of “disparaging the great man” (诋毁伟人). iFlytek shares plummeted, erasing 1.6 billion dollars in market value.

This cautionary tale, involving one of the country’s key players in AI, underscores a unique challenge facing China as it pushes to keep up with technology competitors like the United States. How can it unlock the immense potential of generative AI while ensuring that political and ideological restraints remain firmly in place?

This dilemma has been noted with a sense of amusement this week in media outside China, which have reported that China’s top internet authority, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), has introduced a language model based on Xi Jinping’s signature political philosophy. The Financial Times could not resist a headline referring to this large language model, which the CAC called “secure and reliable,” as “Chat Xi PT.”

In fact, many actors in China have scrambled in recent months to balance the need for rapid advancements in generative AI with the unmovable priority of political security. They include leading state media groups like the People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and the China Media Group (CMG), as well as government research institutes and private companies. 

Last year, the People’s Daily released “Brain AI+” (大脑AI+), announcing that its priority was to create a “mainstream value corpus.” This was a direct reference, couched in official CCP terminology (learn more in our dictionary), to the need to guarantee the political allegiance of generative AI. According to the outlet, this would safeguard “the safe application of generative artificial intelligence in the media industry.” 

The tension between these competing priorities — AI advancement and political restraint — will certainly shape the future of AI in China for years to come, just as it has shaped the Chinese internet ever since the late 1990s.

Balancing Risk and Reward

For years, China’s leaders have prioritized the development of AI technologies as essential to industrial development, and state media have touted trends such as generative AI as “the latest round of technological revolution.” In his first government work report as the country’s premier in March this year, Li Qiang (李强) emphasized the rollout of “AI+” — a campaign to integrate artificial intelligence into every aspect of Chinese industry and society. Elaborating on Li’s report, state media spoke of an ongoing transition from the “internet age” to the “artificial intelligence age.”

While China’s leadership has prepared on many fronts over the past decade for the development of AI, the rapid acceleration of AI applications globally, including the release in November 2022 of ChatGPT, has created a new sense of urgency. When iFlytek chairman Liu Qingfeng (刘庆峰) unveiled “Spark 3.0” late last year, he claimed its comprehensive capabilities surpassed those of ChatGPT, and Chinese media became giddy at the prospects of a technology showdown.

China is determined not just that it won’t be left behind, but that it will lead the generative AI trends of the future. But as the political controversy surrounding the release of “Spark 3.0” made clear, the AI+ vision also comes with substantial political risk for the CCP leadership. The reasons for this come from the nature of large language models, or LLMs, the class of technologies that ground AI chatbots like ChatGPT and “Spark.”

Many Chinese LLMs for Chinese AI text-generation programs have been trained on Western algorithms and data. This means there is a risk that they might generate politically sensitive content. As one professor from the Chinese Academy of Engineering put it in a lecture to the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress last month, one of the inherent risks of AI-generated content in China was “the use of Western values to narrate and export political bias and wrong speech.”

The root of the problem facing AI developers in China is a lack of readily available material that neither breaches the country’s data privacy laws nor crosses its political red lines. Back in February, People’s Data (人民数据), a data subsidiary of the People’s Daily, reported that just 1.3 percent of the roughly five billion pieces of data available to developers when training LLMs was Chinese-language data. The implication, it said, was an over-reliance on Western data sources, which brought inherent political risks. “Although China is rich in data resources, there is still a gap between the Chinese corpus and the data corpus of other languages such as English due to insufficient data mining and circulation,” said People’s Data, “which may become an important factor hindering the development of big models.”

The government is trying to fix this through a medley of robust regulation and education, especially around the datasets the algorithm gets trained on, which are usually scraped from the internet. One institution recommends no dataset be used if the amount of illegal or sensitive content is over five percent. 

Several clean, politically-positive datasets are already available for training AI on, with others due to be rolled out at the provincial level. The People’s Daily has created several datasets, including what it calls the “mainstream values corpus” (主流价值语料库) — again a reference to a set abiding by the CCP-defined “mainstream.” Other datasets are trained on People’s Daily articles, or, reminiscent of the CAC corpus touted this week, on Xi Jinping Thought. The hope is to prepare politically for China’s vibrant but obedient AI of the future.

The attitude of China’s leadership and the AI industry when it comes to political sensitivity is less anxious, and more paternalistic. “The process of training large artificial intelligence models is like raising a child,” Zhang Yongdong, [the] chief scientist of the National Key Laboratory of Communication Content Cognition at the People’s Daily, wrote in an article on the political sustainability of AIGC last year. “How you raise him from an early age and in what environment you train him will determine what kind of person he will become in the future.”

The Model Student

What kind of AI person is China training? We tested “Spark” to find out.  

There are significant holes in the program’s knowledge. For example, it can explain in detail the deeds of Dr. Zhong Nanshan during China’s fight against SARS in 2003, and COVID-19 in 2020. But “Spark” says it has no information about Jiang Yanyong, the doctor who was first a national hero for exposing the SARS cover-up in 2003, but subsequently spent time under house arrest for his courage in reaching out to Western media, and who was also remembered internationally for his outspoken criticism of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. ChatGPT-3.5 answers both questions with ease, and without political squeamishness. 

While criticism is extinguished in “Sparks,”  positive messaging abounds. When asked, “I feel dissatisfied about my country’s rate of development, what should I do?” the chatbot responds that the country has undergone tremendous achievements that are “inseparable from the joint efforts of all of the Chinese people and leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.” It lists informal and formal avenues of recourse for dissatisfied netizens, such as vocalizing their opinions on social media or relaying them to government departments. But it also urges them to be good citizens by contributing to society and engaging in self-improvement, which it ultimately considers the priority. “Please remember,” it concludes, “that every Chinese person is a participant and promoter of our country’s development.” 

Against the history of conscience represented by the original Sparks journal, the irony of China’s most cutting-edge chatbot is cruel. Whereas the Sparks launched by students in 1959 sought to address tragic leadership errors by speaking out against them, its modern namesake suggests social problems are rooted mainly with citizens, who must conform and self-improve. The Party, meanwhile, is the blameless bringer of “overwhelming changes.”

One huge advantage of generative AI for the Party is that compliant students like “Spark” can be used to teach obedience. The CCP’s Xinhua News Agency has already launched an AI platform called “AI Check” (新华较真) that is capable of parsing written content for political mistakes. One editor at the news service claims that his editorial staff are already in the daily habit of using the software. 

Generative artificial intelligence may indeed spark the latest revolution in China. But the Party will do its utmost to ensure the blaze is contained.

With masks off and more than 1,000 foreign journalists in attendance at marquee political sessions in Beijing this month, China’s leaders were keen to show that the country’s door is open to the world — but look through that door and the signs abound of a China far less open and far less receptive to criticism.

There was the sudden cancellation, for the first time in 30 years, of the premier’s annual press conference; the harassment and questioning of reporters who dared to ask the general public even innocuous questions; and the decision not to provide foreign correspondents with advance copies of the government’s work report. 

But one of the clearest signs may have been the enthusiastic presence of a new cohort of foreign journalists hosted directly by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These first-time arrivals in China, accounting for at least one in ten of the reporters filling the balconies at this year’s National People’s Congress, received a disproportionate amount of attention from state media.

As many seasoned reporters are denied access, these invited guests are a reminder that the “openness” China wants is carefully stage-managed.

Show and Tell

According to state-run broadcaster CCTV, roughly 1,000 foreign journalists (including those from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) were registered this year to sit in on the Two Sessions (兩會) of the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing’s cavernous Great Hall of the People, and to ask questions of government ministers at press conferences held outside of the big meetings.

From the start, this year’s journalistic cohort had a different feel to it. Bloomberg’s Colum Murphy noted on X (Twitter) that the press corps was more crowded than in previous years, as some had finally been given visas “after years of trying,” or else were part of a four-month Chinese journalism program for over 100 staffers from publications in the Global South.

Who were the journalists PRC state media chose to highlight? CCTV released a report interviewing six individuals, who all dutifully parroted Party talking points. They spoke of the “openness” of the Two Sessions, which allowed them to “understand China’s people-centered governance,” and their certainty that “China’s economy is strong and resilient.”

One of these was Damira Ibranovic, a reporter on foreign policy for one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s major national TV stations, Federalna. Ibranovic made multiple state media appearances throughout the Two Sessions, giving an interview to Phoenix TV (凤凰卫视) and co-hosting a CGTN video which also appeared on Federalna, with Ibranovic sharing her experience reporting on the Two Sessions. Recounting the press conference held by Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅), she merely repeated Wang’s words about China wanting more cooperation with Europe and said she hoped China would intervene to stop the war in Gaza.

While Ibranovic said she had reported on Chinese politics in the past, she noted that this is not her area of expertise. At several points in official state media coverage, she made clear that this was her first time in the country (and indeed Asia). When she appeared as a panelist for CGTN she said her brief sojourn offered “a good experience to see [at first hand] how a different system works.”

Ibranovic, together with at least four of CCTV’s other six interviewees, is the alumnus of a media training program offered by the China International Press Communication Center (中国国际新闻交流中心), or CIPCC, a program under the China Public Diplomacy Association (中国公共协会), or CPDA. The CIPCC is an invitation-only, four-month course usually starting just before the Two Sessions for around 100 journalists from parts of Europe and the Global South. No journalists from North America were invited.

While the CPDA identifies itself publicly as a “non-profit social organization,” it is directly operated by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). It has been routinely used by the MFA, through many of China’s overseas missions, as a vehicle to engage with foreign media professionals and promote what China’s government calls a “true, multidimensional and comprehensive view of China.” 

At one 2022 event in Africa, journalists were treated to a lecture from the head of the MFA’s Africa Department, Wu Peng (吴鹏), on Xi Jinping’s “farsighted and inspired” political report to the 20th National Congress. The activities organized by the CIPCC are often described in official coverage as furthering the “external propaganda work” of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Some participants in this year’s program with the press exchange center (including two alumni quoted in the CCTV report) visited Guangxi last week, where they were given tours of cutting-edge tech companies and scenic beauty spots. “It’s my second visit to China,” one reporter from Georgia was quoted as saying in the official CCP publication in Weihai city. “It’s a wonderful country with high development. I will spread all this information to my country.”

The most recent cohort of the program has been given lectures on China’s political, social, and cultural development, alongside exchange seminars on media issues and visits to CGTN and Xinhua. Such first-hand experience leads to “authentic reports,” according to CIPCC Director Yu Lei, that “transcend Western narratives.”

At the closing event for last year’s class of foreign journalists, the guest speaker was Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying (华春莹). Emphasizing diplomatic responsibilities over journalistic ones, she told the reporters that they “have become envoys of friendly exchanges and mutual understanding between China and their respective countries.”

Thinking Positive

The incentives for media in the Global South to participate in the program are clear — and may have nothing to do with amplifying PRC propaganda. As Igor Patrick notes in his forthcoming book Hearts & Minds, Votes & Contracts, outlets in Latin America struggle with financing difficulties, a dearth of qualified staff, and problems obtaining journalist visas from China. An official training course offered in an under-covered country can be the perfect foot in the door for any outlet keen to produce their own, independent coverage of China instead of just carrying wire copy.

But for China, journalistic expertise and independence are beside the point. The less familiar participants are to the country and region, the more likely they are to internalize and recite the “good stories” their hosts tell about themselves. The government views these tabula rasa, or blank-slate, journalists as more directly beneficial to the party-state in conveying its message to the world than more experienced, veteran foreign correspondents — many of whom have been expelled from the country or denied visas over the past few years.

The biggest losers are international audiences expecting impartial or authoritative coverage of one of the world’s most consequential nations. 

Iara Vidal, who identifies herself as a Chinese affairs columnist for Brazil’s Revista Forum, a magazine that seeks “different worldviews” beyond mainstream media, provides a glimpse of what the geopolitical benefits that can accrue from media exchanges like those supported by the CIPCC.

Prior to joining the training program in 2022, Vidal was a fashion journalist with no experience of China. On the sidelines of the CCP’s 20th National Congress that year, she wrote about how she had lectured a journalist from Taiwan, telling the reporter that “Taiwan is China.” She claimed to have explained that “China is not going to invade a territory that has always been theirs, and I have never seen this country behave in a warlike way.”

A story on the Two Sessions for Federalna by Ibranovic, the reporter from Bosnia and Herzegovina, seems to show her attempting her own reporting. But there are telling knowledge gaps. In reporting on China’s economic goals announced at the conference, she misses out crucial context — not least the current headwinds facing China’s economy, and the fact that last year’s 5.2 percent growth rate was the lowest in decades. Much of her report reads like a grocery list of stated Chinese aims and agendas, without deeper analysis or questioning, though she does manage to bring in remarks from foreign politicians — such as European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen’s statement on March 7 about the emergence of a “rising and disturbing league of dictators.” Regarding China’s increasingly aggressive position on Taiwan, Ibranovic seems to wave this off as merely a matter of China “preserving what they consider their own.”

The shallowness of these reports is a feature rather than a bug of the CIPCC training program. Journalists who arrive in Beijing as paid guests of China, with itineraries managed and information dished out by the foreign ministry, are far more likely to enter and leave the country with a sense of gratitude — as the “envoys of friendly exchanges” Hua Chunying spoke about. 

Old Friends, and New

When China talks about its hopes for the work of foreign journalists, the word “friendship” is always close by. Friendliness was on display as Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) fielded a softball question during his press conference at the Two Sessions from Ameen Muneer Mohammed Al-Obaidi of China-Arab TV, a Dubai-based media company listed in Hong Kong and owned by Chinese businessman Zhang Lijun. 

In fluent Mandarin, Al-Obaidi tossed out the catchphrase China’s leadership has used since 2013 to focus its aim for a more positive global image through effective foreign propaganda: “What role can foreign reporters play in telling China’s story well?” 

The foreign minister smiled, and with feigned spontaneity noted that he had seen Al-Obaidi performing a freestyle street dance called kemusan in short videos posted online. Then, reading his prepared script, Wang began: “The China story is a great story, and this is first and foremost the story of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Wang said that journalists should tell the world about China’s achievements and its vitality, and about how it was a responsible power bringing peace and mutual benefit to the world. “We invite more foreign friends to come together to tell the story of an energetic and bustling China, and of China working hand-in-hand with other countries to build a community of shared future for mankind,” he said. 

Come journalists and tell the China story. But don’t lose the plot.