Now director of the CMP, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David joined the team in 2004 after completing his master’s degree at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is currently an honorary lecturer at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin/Melville House), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).
Among provincial-level officials in China, one of the most outwardly loyal to Xi Jinping has been Li Hongzhong (李鸿忠), the CCP secretary of Tianjin municipality. It was Li who said himself back in 2016 that, “If loyalty is not absolute, then it is absolutely not loyalty.”
But on Tuesday this week, Secretary Li outdid himself in his praise of Xi Jinping. At a special CCP history learning session held in Tianjin to commemorate the Party’s centennial, Li began with more run-of-the-mill loyalty signaling. He urged those present to uphold the “Four Consciousnesses” (四个意识), “Four Confidences” (四个自信) and “Two Protections” (两个维护). These three phrases, known collectively as the “442” formula, are critical to the consolidation of Xi Jinping’s personal power at the leader of the CCP.
The “Four Consciousnesses” refer to the 1) need to maintain political integrity, 2) think in big-picture terms, 3)uphold the leadership core (in other words, Xi Jinping), and 4) keep in alignment with the CCP’s central leadership. Skipping past the “Four Confidences,” more explanation being available here, the “Two Protections” are: 1) protecting, once again, the core status of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and 2) protecting the central, unified leadership of the Central Committee of the CCP.
Li Hongzhong did not stop at the “442,” however. As he spoke about the “Two Centenaries” (两个一百年), the idea promoted by Xi Jinping that the China will 1) become a “moderately well-off” by the first centennial celebration, the Party’s anniversary this year, and 2) will successfully become a “strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious and modern socialist country” by 2049, the centennial of the PRC, here is what Li actually said:
It is the good fortune of our Party, our country and the Chinese nation to have had General Secretary Xi Jinping at the helm and steering the ship on the new journey to realize the Chinese nation’s rise to strength. We have closely followed General Secretary Xi Jinping in seizing our great victory in struggling toward the first centenary goal, and now we will continue to unswervingly follow him as we strive toward the realization of the second century goal and the great leap to realize the strengthening of the Chinese nation.
This is a lofty compliment indeed from Li. He is essentially saying that having now led China to the achievement of the first centenary goal during his second term, Xi Jinping can continue leading the CCP toward the achievement of the second goal. That would necessitate Xi remaining in office far beyond the 20th National Congress of the CCP in 2022. To make the October 1, 2049, celebration of the PRC centennial, Xi Jinping would have to be well past his 96th birthday. For comparison, Deng Xiaoping was 92 years old when he passed away on February 19, 1997.
When Xi Jinping delivers his speech this week to commemorate the centennial of the Chinese Communist Party, his theme will be history. Not as a factual question for thoughtful and critical exploration, mind you, but as the incontestable foundation of the Party’s rule, bereft of uncertainties and ambiguities. For their part, the Chinese media will remain compliant. The cost of dissent is too high at such moments of historical gravity. But how, if we look back on history, returning to the facts, did the Party’s early leaders understand the role of the press and its relationship to the public?
On January 11, 1946, an essay by Lu Dingyi (陆定一) was published in the Xinhua Daily (新华日报), a newspaper that had been launched exactly eight years earlier by Zhou Enlai (周恩来) and other Party leaders. In the essay, Lu Dingyi sharply criticizes authoritarian means of controlling the press, and argues for the fundamental importance of journalists seeking “real information” that “the people need to know.”
Lu, a leader who had taken part in the Long March and was a member of the Party’s Propaganda Department from 1934 onward, was a key figure within the Party’s intellectual culture at the time. In 1942, he had become editor-in-chief of the Liberation Daily, the CCP paper launched the previous year in Yan’an. In 1943, he wrote a long essay called “Our Basic Views on Journalism” (我们对于新闻学的基本观点), in which he highlighted what he viewed as the problems with “bourgeois journalism” and answered the fundamental question of “how news can be true.” It was in this work that Lu Dingyi emphasized facts as the basis of journalism along the lines of dialectical materialism. “The origin of the news is the material itself, the facts – and these are the facts that occur in the struggle between humankind and the natural world, and in the midst of social struggle,” he wrote. “Therefore, the news can be defined as the reporting of facts as they have newly occurred.”
Lu’s argument in his January 1946 essay in the Xinhua Daily, the first CCP newspaper to be distributed openly nationwide in China during the Republican Era (up until its closure by the Kuomintang government on February 28, 1927), can be seen as part of a deeper tradition supporting the idea of the “people nature,” or renminxing (人民性) of the media, as opposed to the “Party nature,” or dangxing (党性), which holds that the media fundamentally serve the CCP. This debate has emerged at various points in the Party’s history, in fact, such as in the 1980s, when the question was bitterly argued by Hu Jiwei (胡绩伟), the liberal People’s Daily editor who supported greater press independence, and Hu Qiaomu (胡乔木), the hardliner who insisted that “Party nature” was supreme, and that “people nature” arose from it.
More recently, Xi Jinping’s February 2016 speech on the media, in which he emphasized that media must be “surnamed Party” (姓党), was an unambiguous affirmation of the Hu Qiaomu line of thought, and contemporary CCP theorists since have stressed the “unity of the Party nature and the people nature.”
Lu Dingyi’s 1946 essay is certainly food for thought at a time when the intellectual content of the CCP’s history is itself subject to strict controls – and when red slogans drown out all nuance. At one point, Lu colorfully refers to the newspaper under authoritarian control, which spreads lies and disinformation, to “a steel blade that kills bloodlessly.” Our translation follows:
A journalist from Xin Min Po (新民报) asked me: “Some people think that Chinese journalists aren’t as good a British and American journalists. What is your opinion?” I responded by saying: “I don’t think so. Chinese journalists are no less capable than the journalists of other countries. Journalists from Britain and America certainly have their strengths. But for Chinese journalists to be able, under such immense pressures, to expose real information to the people that they need to know – that kind of experience, that kind of ability, is far beyond the reach of British and American journalists. If a tree, let’s say, grows on a flat stretch of land, it may grow to be very tall and very straight. That’s easy. But if it grows in rocky and twisted terrain, even if it becomes stunted, this is no small feat.” When I talk about Chinese journalists here I’m talking mostly about those who are working in the vast backcountry.
Why have modern newspapers emerged in the world? This is because the masses demand to know real information (真实的信息). Modern newspapers are the product of capitalist societies, and perhaps they emerged at the same time as democratic ideas. Authoritarians do not want the people to be intelligent or to understand things. They only want them to be foolish as wild beasts. And so they really don’t like modern newspapers. New authoritarians, or fascists, are more advanced even than their forebears. Goebbels’ principle is to take all newspapers, magazines, radio, television and everything, and rule it all together, so that disinformation is complete, and everything the people see with their eyes or hear with their ears is fascist disinformation, with no exceptions. In Goebbel’s hands, newspapers undergo a change contrary to their original intention, as lies take the place of real information. When people read such newspapers, not only can they not become intelligent, but moreover, quite the contrary, they become more and more confused.Look at Germany. Were there not many tens of thousands willing to become cannon fodder for Hitler?
So, there are two kinds of newspapers. One kind is the newspaper for the masses, which tells the people real information, inspiring the idea of people’s democracy, and urging the people to intelligence. Another kind of newspaper is the newspaper of the new authoritarian, which tells the people lies, closes off the people’s thoughts, and causes the people to become foolish. The first kind is good for a society and a people, and without it what we call civilization is truly unimaginable. The second kind is the opposite. It is poisonous to society, to humanity, and to the people of a nation. It is a steel blade that kills bloodlessly.
And so also, there are two kinds of journalists. The first kind of journalist serves the people, and tells the masses information the masses must know. He lifts up the opinions of the masses as public opinion. Another kind of journalist serves the authoritarian, and his task is disinformation, disinformation and more disinformation.
There are certain people in China who combine both the new and old styles of authoritarianism. On the one hand they use newspapers to sow disinformation, and on the other they prohibit other types of newspaper that expose real information. They fear the real journalist, because they have secrets they cannot tell people. So they prefer to do things in an underhanded way, so that people do not to take notice. If someone knows what they have done, and openly reports it, or takes what they did and honestly ‘exposes’ it, then they become furious. They will use any means necessary [to put a stop to it]. They put foreign journalists on blacklists, and they use visible and invisible means to threaten Chinese journalists, telling them, ‘Be careful! Be careful!’ . . . .
The journalist should be careful. But this carefulness should not be used to serve the authoritarian, but rather to serve the people, to become a servant of the people. The people are the most honored masters of the journalist. If [a journalist] serves this honored master, then of course there is need for caution. But this “caution” is not about whether one is permitted to publish real information, but quite the contrary, it is about doing everything possible to ensure that information is completely true – so that speech can truly represent the views of the people. In the midst of the Anti-Japanese War, who were the people? They were the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie, the liberal bourgeoisie, the enlightened gentry, and all those who love our country. They are the true masters of our nation. Authoritarians oppress the people, plunder the people, and make it such that the people have no path to salvation.
In the latest edition of the Chinese Communist Party’s official journal Seeking Truth (求是), released last week, Xi Jinping topped the table of contents – as now seems to be mandated practice. But another prominent byline was that of Shen Haixiong (慎海雄), the head of China Media Group, or “Voice of China,” the official media conglomerate directly under the Central Propaganda Department (CPD) that was created in 2018 to serve as the umbrella group for state media as they sought greater influence internationally.
In fitting form as the 100th anniversary of the CCP approaches, Shen’s article was essentially an act of declaration (表态), expressing loyalty to Xi Jinping, to the Party and to its principles. In a series of deferential remarks greased with the phrase “General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly pointed out” (习近平总书记深刻指出), Shen stressed the glories of CCP history, and the great gifts bequeathed to the Chinese people in the form of “red traditions” (红色传统) and “red genes” (红色基因).
Shen revealed little, however, about China’s push to expand its international “discourse power” (话语权), the strategy that was the focus at the May 31 collective study session of the Politburo. On this issue, the media chief offered only a bland re-statement of purpose: the CCP must “build a new type of first-class international mainstream media with a strong capacity to lead, communicate and influence.”
But how do Shen Haixiong and the China Media Group hope to actually achieve this broad objective? To answer this question, we must look beyond Shen’s hymn on Party history in Seeking Truth to a speech he gave back on June 3 as he chaired a “thematic session” (专题会议) to convey the “spirit” of Xi Jinping’s remarks at the May 31 collective study session.
Shen, who is also a deputy minister at the CPD, emphasized at the June 3 session that “telling China’s story well” (讲好中国故事), and showing a “true, three-dimensional and comprehensive China” (展示真实立体全面的中国) necessitates the creation of “international discourse power that matches our country’s comprehensive national power.” One crucial point of breakthrough in reaching this objective, said Shen, was to create “a studio for influencers in multiple languages” (多语种网红工作室).
Beyond the usual buzzwords in the realm of external propaganda (外宣) and public diplomacy (公共外交), which often become indistinguishable in CCP strategizing, this talk of an “Influencer Studio” (网红工作室) is an intriguing clue. Generally, the phrase “influencer studio” can refer online in China to the space where influencers, as they hock the latest eyeliner, halter top or body cream, appear to their dedicated fans. It might be a backdrop that reads Danish modern or Japanese spa. But in this context, Shen Haixiong is talking instead about a state-supported training program for online influencers that would, at least in theory, allow the leadership to better capitalize on new media platforms as they are used by millennials.
The bottom line here is that CCP planners are strategizing about how to better reach younger media consumers globally, designing external propaganda for the next decade. And that means that China’s external messaging, even as it strictly adheres to political “red lines,” must learn to be youthful and viral.
Back in August 2019, these priorities were addressed openly at the China Media Group as it announced the formation of the International Communications Planning Bureau (国际传播规划局), the new buzzing hive of the CCP’s external propaganda planning, execution and assessment. In his speech introducing the International Communications Planning Bureau (ICPB), Shen Haixiong said that China Media Group must “actively explore new methods of external communication, including the Influencer Studio (网红工作室), and creating a ‘mobile app cluster in multiple languages’ and a ‘cluster of overseas social media platform accounts,’ thereby steadily raising our influence among young people and mainstream people.”
A chart from the WeChat public account of the official People’s Daily explains the merger of major state media entities into China Media Group in 2018.
Here we can glimpse three distinct approaches at the China Media Group. First, a program to train and support online influencers that could be attractive for foreign audiences on social media platforms, all the while “maintaining political discipline” (坚持政治导向), the prerequisite for all content. These influencers, says in his recent speech on June 3, should be instrumental in reporting on “headline projects” (头条工程) and major topics (重大主题) – think initiatives like Belt and Road, and issues like Hong Kong – and training must be strengthened, he says, for influencers in “priority regions and priority languages” (重要地区重点语言).
The second distinct approach is to develop a cluster of information apps that can engage foreign audiences, whatever language they speak. Thirdly, the China Media Group must capitalize on overseas social media platforms to reach foreign users, particularly young users, who increasingly connect and engage through such tools. The focus in Shen’s speech on “young people and mainstream people” is a reminder of just how broadly the CMG conceives of this campaign – the goal being a groundswell of changing perception internationally on China.
We might respond that China’s state media have tried this last tactic before, launching accounts on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But the formation of China Media Group’s ICPB, which has nine subsidiary departments, suggests more concerted planning along several key lines. The departments now include: the 1) General Division (综合处); the 2) Project Coordination Division (项目统筹处); the 3) Overseas Brand Promotion Division (海外品牌推广处); the 4) Asia Division (亚洲处); the 5) West Asia and Africa Division (西亚非洲处); the 6) Europe and Latin America Division (欧洲拉美处); the 7) Americas and Oceania Division (美洲大洋洲处); 8) the Chinese Language Promotion Division (汉语推广处); and the 9) Overseas Evaluation and Verification Division (海外评估核查处).
Though little information is so far available about the ICPB and its subsidiary departments, this restructuring suggests that the China Media Group is gearing up for a sustained external propaganda campaign that is both concerted and to some extent responsive, considering regional differences and languages and also evaluating impact. In his June 3 speech, as he highlighted the urgency of fostering influencers in multiples regions and languages, Shen also said there was a need for “refined classification” (细化分类), “content deepening” (深耕内容) and “differential development” (差异化发展). The group is striving, at least, to break free of the one-size-fits-all thinking that for years has plagued China’s external communication efforts – and is still very much in evidence.
Two further clues can be spotted in Shen Haixiong’s June 3 speech. As the CMG chief talks about building up the team to conduct international communication (队伍建设), he says that journalists overseas should act as “diplomats” (外交家) and “social activists” (社会活动家). Shen in fact used both of these terms in another address back in October last year, when he spoke of “communication for a favourable impression” (好感传播), which should be taken as further proof that the talk of being “lovable” in the May collective study session was neither fresh nor an indication, as some reported, of a planned change in tone.
The term “social activist” may seem odd here, bringing to mind an individual working for social change through intentional action. In a Chinese political context, however, this refers instead to engagement with more ordinary social actors to further the Party’s agenda and convey its voice, which of course is “China’s voice.” The reference to “diplomats,” meanwhile, suggests CMG journalists internationally should be conveying and defending the official line, particularly to those who are themselves in positions of relative influence in foreign countries, in both leadership and the media.
“History is the best teacher,” Xi Jinping said in 2019 as he addressed a seminar for teachers of ideological and political theory courses. This laconic statement about the wisdom to be drawn from the well of the past might have been inspired by any number of historical figures, from Rosa Luxembourg to Winston Churchill. But it prompts an even more basic question: What does Xi Jinping mean by history?
The most recent edition of Seeking Truth (求是), the Chinese Communist Party’s official journal of theory, goes a long way in answering this question. Once again, as in previous editions, the table of contents is topped by an article attributed to Xi himself, a practice dating back to early 2019 that is an unmistakable sign of the general secretary’s commanding position within the CCP.
As has also been the practice since 2019, the publication of Xi’s article in Seeking Truth is announced with great fanfare in the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper today, and also tops the paper’s website – with the headline that tells us history is a “mirror,” and that understanding it leads us to a love of the CCP and a love of the nation (以史为镜、以史明志，知史爱党、知史爱国).
In fact, Xi’s article, like so many that have taken a commanding position at Seeking Truth in recent months, is a compilation of quotes he has made in official speeches and letters since 2013. The reference to history as a mirror, for example, comes from a speech he made on December 28, 2015, at a so-called democratic life meeting of the Politburo.
“We must strengthen our study of history, particularly the study of the ancient history of China, of contemporary Chinese history, and of the history of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “History is a mirror, and from history we can be enlightened and receive direction.”
But reading Xi’s lines, and reading between the lines, it is clear that what history is mirroring back for the CCP is a story of unmitigated glory. This is not about reflection in the deeper sense, of questioning the errors and missteps of the past and pledging never to repeat them. There is no mention of the Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward. Nor is there any word about that document that in the earliest days of the reform era defined the sense of self-examination, the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Xi Jinping’s history, above all, is a resource of legitimacy. As such it must brim with “positive energy.” This Xi-era term denoting confident and uplifting messages (and the necessary restriction of their opposites) appears twice in the Seeking Truth article. “For us communists, the history of the Chinese revolution is the best nutrient,” Xi said during a visit to Hebei province in July 2013. “If we revisit the great history of our party leading the people in the revolution, we will increase a lot of positive energy in our hearts.”
Many of the quotes emphasize the value of China’s revolutionary history, focussing on the period before the establishment of the PRC – including episodes like the Long March and the Anti-Japanese War (抗日战争). These have been braided together in the CCP’s current conception of history with notions of the greatness of traditional Chinese culture, forming a DNA strand that is meant to cement the Party’s position at the center of Chinese identity.
The idea of the CCP’s legacy as a Chinese cultural inheritance is everywhere in the political discourse as the 100th anniversary of the Party approaches, epitomized by the notion of “red genes” that must be nurtured and passed on. In a May 2018 letter to a primary school in Shaanxi, Xi Jinping wrote: “I hope that all of you come to better understand the history of revolution, [PRC] establishment and reform in China, that you learn from heroic and exemplary figures, that you ardently love the Party, ardently love the motherland, ardently love the people, and that through your actions you transmit red genes from generation to generation.”
The People’s Daily report on the Seeking Truth article by Xi emphasizes another line from the general secretary that appears in the first two quotes listed. “History,” says Xi, “is the best textbook.” The proviso of course is that the textbook must, as another of Xi’s quotes says, “focus on why the CCP is ‘capable,’ why Marxism ‘works’ and why socialism with Chinese characteristics is ‘good.'”
As Xi has regularly stressed, echoing Mao Zedong: “East, west, south, north and center, Party, government, military, society and education – the Party rules all.” If history is a mirror, the CCP must command the reflection.
As the doors opened Monday for China’s national college entrance examinations, nearly 11 million candidates flooded examination centers across the country. And as the clock ran down to zero for the morning’s language subject test, it was finally possible by lunchtime for People’s Daily Online to share this year’s essay test questions.
What competencies were China’s young test takers challenged to demonstrate? An appreciation of the world views of others, perhaps? Or a tough-minded curiosity on global and intercultural issues? Surely, as the leadership pushes for innovation and self-reliance, these future university students were encouraged to demonstrate their capacity for independent and critical thinking?
Think again. But do not think too acutely.
The demand for competence and allegiance increasingly commingle in Xi Jinping’s China, where education has become a process not just of gaining knowledge and skill, but of signaling and instilling the image of the Chinese Communist Party as benevolent and capable. Patriotic education, or the “construction of socialist spiritual civilization” (社会主义精神文明建设), has been a feature of education in the PRC since the early 1990s, as the CCP sought to remake a legacy that had been badly damaged by the brutal suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989. But Xi Jinping has doubled down on the glories of the CCP’s past as a resource for legitimacy to be reconstructed from the primary level on up.
As Xi has regularly re-asserted, echoing Mao Zedong: “East, west, south, north and center, Party, government, military, society and education – the Party rules all.” New guidelines for patriotic education in 2019 encouraged the melding of “love of the Party, love of the nation and love of socialism,” and mandated “strengthening the will of a strong nation” (砥砺强国之志) through revolutionary nostalgia and the promise of what Xi has called the “great rejuvenation.” The emphasis on “red culture” has now become ubiquitous, to the point even of exhausting the very youth it is meant to inspire – with school textbooks on “transmitting red genes,” regular special events for the telling of “red stories,” and the incessant singing and dancing of “red songs.”
Little surprise then that many students taking college entrance examinations this week have been challenged to demonstrate, in 800 characters or more, their Panglossian allegiance to CCP ideals as they show off their mastery of Chinese grammar and composition.
The subject of National Paper A (全国甲卷) in yesterday’s exam was given as follows:
The Chinese Communist Party has gone through a century of history. The revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture nurtured in the great struggle carried out by the Party in uniting and leading the people has been deeply integrated into our bloodline and soul. We have celebrated holidays such as “May Fourth,” “July First,” “August First” and “October 1,” and we have sung songs such as “March of the Volunteers” (义勇军进行曲), and “Without the CCP There Would Be No New China” (没有共产党就没有新中国). We have read works such as “Serve the People” (为人民服务), “Qin Yuan Chun – Snow” (《沁园春·雪), “Lotus Creek” (荷花淀) and “Red Crag” (红岩). We have admired revolutionary martyrs such as Li Dazhao (李大钊), Xia Minghan, Fang Zhimin and Yang Jingyu. We study role models such as Lei Feng (雷锋), Jiao Yulu (焦裕禄), Qian Xuesen (钱学森), Huang Danian (黄大年) and others. All of them provide us with spiritual nourishment and inspiration. There is sunshine in our hearts, and there is power beneath our feet. Our future will merge with the new journey toward the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and we are in the midst of an era of great promise . . . .
Assignment: Please compose an essay on the theme of “great possibilities and seizing opportunity” (可为与有为) on the basis of the material.
Xi’s New Era is certainly no time to expound in an exam paper on the temptations of “lying down” (躺平), a neologism that for many young people in China has come in recent weeks to offer the promise of tranquility, a respite from the unbearable pressures of ambition and overwork in a society that emphasizes self-sacrifice and “lives elevated by struggle.”
On Monday this week a collective study session of China’s Politburo, the top decision-making body of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), addressed the topic of external propaganda and messaging, which in recent years has fallen under the rubric of what Xi Jinping calls “telling China’s story well” (讲好中国故事). Over the past two years, that story has seemed a rancorous one, delivered with venom from the “wolf warriors” at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Analysts who sought clues to a possible tactical reset in the language of the collective study session found encouragement in one phrase in particular: “[The Party] must focus on grasping the tone, being open and confident as well as having modesty and humility, striving to build a credible, lovable and respectable image of China.” Language about the need for China to expand its “circle of friends in international public opinion” (国际舆论朋友圈) added, for some, to the sense of a tonal change.
The word “lovable” was an obvious temptation. If China wished to be loved, then surely it would begin to speak more cordially, if not affectionately. As for “grasping the tone,” could that not suggest an inclination to tone things down? A report from Bloomberg took the language on lovability and friend circles as “a sign that Beijing may be looking to smooth its hard-edged diplomatic approach,” and that “Xi may be rethinking his communication strategy on the global stage.”
Before we invest ourselves too deeply, we should look carefully at the context.
Within the textual fabric of the news of the collective study session there is plenty to give pause: the characterization of the challenge at hand as a “public opinion struggle’ (舆论斗争), a term redolent of the Mao era; the persistently tone-deaf language about educating foreigners about the goodness of the CCP; the talk of mobilizing, funding and training and, importantly, ideologically assessing local leaders on their input in terms of international communication work, which hardly seems conducive to a broad change in tone. On the issue of broadening the “friend circle,” how can it escape notice that the next line is a reiteration of the “public opinion struggle”? In such a struggle, there are friends in the form of compliant media and apologists, and there are enemies in the form of recalcitrant journalists, academics and politicians who insist on criticism – exactly what this external push is designed to neutralize.
But beyond the text itself, remembering that we have only Xinhua News Agency reporting, there is an important point of context so obvious many observers seem to have missed it.
This was a collective study session, and such sessions, whatever their topic, generally benefit from the instruction of experts. In this case, we are told right at the outset of the official news release that “professor Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University offered his explanations on this issue, and suggestions for work.” What sort of teacher would Zhang Weiwei be?
A professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, Zhang Weiwei (张维为) is director of the university’s Institute for Chinese Studies. In the 1980s he served within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an interpreter for senior leaders, including Deng Xiaoping. He is an old hand when it comes to Chinese diplomacy, and in the course of his career has visited many countries.
Zhang is also a staunch defender of what he regards as the superiority of the political system led by the CCP, and of the so-called “China Model,” which he insists has ‘performed better than other models.” Internationally, one of his most remembered exchanges is his 2011 debate with Francis Fukuyama, in which he extolled the virtues of the Chinese system and suggested that Western democratic systems “might be only transitory in the long history of mankind.”
The rise of China is what we call “shi” or an overall trend, the scale and speed of which is unprecedented in human history. My own feeling is that the Western system is trekking on a downward slope and in need of major repairs and reforms. Some Chinese always speak and think highly of the US model, but to someone who has lived in Europe and visited the US many times, this is a bit too simplistic and naive.
In a 2013 interview with Phoenix Weekly, “The Chinese No Longer Require the ‘American Dream’”, Zhang spoke glowingly of China’s achievements and the ways in which it has already surpassed the West. “We have learned a lot from the West and will continue to learn in the future, but we have a vision today that goes beyond the West,” he said. Importantly, he spoke of a coming era of “post-Western discourse” (后西方话语) in which the rising dominance of a “Chinese discourse system” (中国话语体系) should be expected.
The notion of a “Chinese discourse system” appears, in fact, in the announcement from the collective study session, and we should note that it has generally not been among the terminologies in the arena of external propaganda, soft power and so on. Here is the portion of the Phoenix Weekly interview in which Zhang discusses this emerging system and its implications for scholarship and the “new world order”:
Chinese intellectuals should no longer be subservient to the Western discourse, but should think independently and, with their own conscience, knowledge and patriotic spirit, absorb the wisdom of the world while rejecting Western neo-obscurantism (西方新蒙昧主义). They should jointly explore and construct a Chinese discourse system in the era of “post-Western discourse,” making their own contribution to the formation of a new world order.
Zhang has repeatedly urged “self-confidence” in China’s model, and in the building of a “Chinese discourse” grounded in self-confidence that can then be applied in public diplomacy. In a 2014 talk called “Chinese Must Have Self-Confidence” (中国人你要自信), Zhang urged an end to uncertainty: “Let us remove the hat of flagging self-confidence and give it to our opponent,” he said. It was with this newly asserted self-confidence that China should combat the distortions and misunderstandings of the West.
Given the unshakable premise that China’s system is superior in terms of its performance, it naturally follows that the core problem is Western resistance. “Because the mainstream media in the West have long reported on China in an manner that is not factual, and with a strong ideological bias and cultural prejudice,” said Zhang, “many people in many Western countries, and even many experts and scholars, have a very poor understanding of China.”
In a video interview with People’s Daily Online posted today, Zhang again places the blame for miscommunication squarely on the shoulders of the West. To the extent that the project of “telling China’s story well” has not succeeded as it might, and misunderstandings persist, this, he says, is “mainly a problem on the part of the West.”
Zhang speaks of the urgent need and responsibility of the West to “understand China.” Given his emphasis on the glories of the “China Model” and the objective truth of “China’s story,” which at its core is about the infallibility of the CCP, this need to “understand China” is not really about dialogue or dialectic. It is about acceptance. China must act with confidence to overcome these misunderstandings. As one senior German diplomat told GMF’s Noah Barkin recently: “Dialogue is now conditional on us not criticizing China.”
If one detects a certain wolfishness in this perspective, Zhang does not disappoint in his views on how China should respond to the prejudices that are standard fare, according to the CCP narrative, for the West. Here is what Zhang said in September 2020, during an interview on the “This is China” television program:
The Chinese have a culture of ‘being kind to others’ and of giving face to others, which the West does not have. That’s why I often say that in order to communicate better with the West (与西方交流), we have to learn to confront the West (与西方交锋), and after confrontation we can often communicate better. Of course, confrontation does not mean you shout yourself hoarse, as the Chinese say. Confrontation is about stating your principles clearly. Western culture is a culture of the strong (西方文化是强者文化). They respect the strong, respect the winner. If they raise a provocative issue and you dare not respond, dare not confront, then you have lost. And you’ve lost representing the country.
Zhang, with his talk here of “crossing swords” (交锋), sounds very much like a proponent of what is so often now called “wolf-warrior diplomacy.” He is a champion of the Chinese system, and of its assertion in international discourse and diplomacy as “self-confidence.” Considering that the Shanghai professor has advised the leadership for a number of years on these questions, including at a May 2016 symposium hosted by Xi, we should perhaps view him not as a moderating voice on the question of international discourse and diplomacy, but rather as a one of a number of architects and supporters of the approaches that have been applied over the past several years.
The West must be persuaded to see things China’s way. And to this end, confrontation, the crossing of swords, will likely remain as a core component of communication as conceived by the leadership.
At a conference of scientists and engineers from China’s national academies last week, Xi Jinping sounded a strong note on the country’s development as a powerhouse of science and innovation. In his address to the event, which was attended by all seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, Xi outlined his ambition to secure China’s status as a “science and technology power” (科技强国), thereby securing a “new pattern of development” focused on “high-quality” – this last word a reference to moving up the global value chain.
But another catchphrase stood out in Xi’s speech. The party’s general secretary spoke of “science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement,” or keji zili ziqiang (科技自立自强) as the “strategic support for national development.” This underscores again China’s determination to pursue a path of greater self-reliance, a theme reiterated throughout the ambitious 15-year economic agenda China outlined at the National People’s Congress back in March.
Self-reliance will no doubt continue to be a major theme as China seeks to address slowing economic growth amid a complicated array of domestic and global challenges – including greater wariness and pushback from the United States, the EU and other major economies. Even as Xi addressed participants from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and the Chinese Association of Science and Technology (CAST) last week, the US was poised to pass broadly bipartisan legislation to compete with China, including billions in new funding and an overhaul of the National Science Foundation.
“Technology self-reliance and self-improvement” will be a slogan to watch in the coming months and years. So what do we know about how this phrase came about?
Two articles featured prominently to the right of the masthead on the front page of the People’s Daily newspaper today include the term “science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement.”
While buzzwords like “scientific innovation” (科技创新) and “science and technology power” have been regular features of Xi-era discourse on science and technology, “science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement” is a much more recent addition. Both “scientific innovation” and the notion of building a “science and technology power” featured strongly in the 13th Five-Year Plan as it was introduced back in 2016, part of the focus on innovation-driven development. Official coverage at the time specifically noted that this was the first time that “scientific innovation” had made the economic blueprint as a concept for top-level planning.
But this higher profile for “scientific innovation” in fact began even earlier, around October 2015, as it became a major focus during the the 5th Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CCP. The emphasis on providing policy and material support for the “building of a global science and technology power” (建设世界科技强国) is clear in official news coverage in China from September 2016 onward, as the new five-year plan turned up the volume on innovation-driven development as the way forward for China’s domestic economic health and global competitiveness.
If “scientific innovation” was a key buzzword in 2016 and afterward for the growing emphasis on cutting edge technology as a development driver, “science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement” can be seen to signal the renewed conviction within the leadership that China must achieve self-sufficiency as a global technology power.
A commentary on “achieving a high level of self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology” is featured at the top of People’s Daily Online on Sunday, May 30, 2021.
Not surprisingly, we see this new phrase emerge for the first time around the 5th Plenum of the 19th Central Committee in October of last year – this being the meeting from which the communique emerged that offered the first glimpses of the 14th Five-Year Plan. The full phrase to appear at that time was, “taking self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology as the strategic support for national development” (把科技自立自强作为国家发展的战略支撑). As the five-year plan and the vision for 2035 blanketed official news coverage in October and November of last year, the phrase “science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement” was everywhere.
This talk of self-reliance and self-improvement has been attended by a discourse of “self-confidence” (自信). But here, as is so often the case, the projection of self-confidence betrays deeper anxieties. A sense of crisis underlies the talk of historic opportunity. One of the clearest examples in the official discourse came in December 2020, just as the Central Economic Work Conference was concluded. An official commentary, or shelun (社论), in the People’s Daily newspaper spoke confidently of China’s “institutional advantages” (制度优势) — code for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party — before asserting that “scientific decision-making and creative responsiveness are the fundamental methods by which crisis can be transformed into opportunity, and self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology provide the fundamental support to promote overall development.”
This phrase is worth monitoring closely as an indicator of China’s pursuit of self-reliance in its innovation-driven development.
When writing an obituary there is one question above all others that must be factually established: Has the subject in fact died? It is a basic rule of thumb that CGTN, China’s international English-language cable TV news service, and many other state media outlets, fumbled badly today as they issued premature reports of the death of the celebrated agronomist Yuan Longping (袁隆平), known for his development of high-yield rice varieties.
Yuan, 90, in fact did pass away at around 1PM Beijing time, but this was many hours after CGTN reported through its official Weibo account that the scientist had died in Changsha at the age of 91. Later this morning, after the CGTN report set off a wave of copycat coverage, Yuan’s personal secretary confirmed that he had been unwell, but said he remained in the hospital for treatment.
A Weibo post from CGTN today reports that celebrated agronomist Yuan Longping has passed away.
Within several hours, CGTN had removed the original story, seen below with its 404 error and remaining search result on Google, and the network had issued a public apology.
The fake news traveled rapidly this morning, picked up by numerous official news outlets and other channels. Below is a screenshot of a report from Phoenix News, citing as a source a subsidiary publication of the state-run China Central Television (CCTV), China Television News (中国电视报).
A soaring tribute to Yuan Longping, from CCTV’s China Television News, is shared by Phoenix News.
The China Television News tribute struck an emotional tone, emphasizing love and dedication to the country:
An old man with the heart of a child, and with a childhood dream. His love for this land was profound, and he was a faithful watcher of the rice fields!
🕯 We offer our tribute, in memory!
Sites across the Chinese internet pounced on the fake news, and even for a time the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia included a date of death for Yuan’s entry, while the English-language Wikipedia continued to list the scientist as alive.
EqualOcean, an investment research platform, was also caught in the fake news trap, passing along the news of Yuan Longping’s death, and then deleting the article, which remains in Google results.
Shortly after the news began spreading like wildfire, Eastday, the national news portal based in Shanghai, reported, citing Hunan’s provincial propaganda department, that the news of Yuan’s death was in fact fake news. The simple message in the header read: “[Propaganda Department of the Hunan Provincial Committee: #YuanLongpingPassingIsFakeNews#] (湖南省委宣传部: #袁隆平去世为假信息#).
A Weibo post by Eastday cites the Hunan provincial propaganda department calling the news of Yuan Longping’s death “fake news.”
This story about fake news disseminated through state media outlets about a celebrated figure in China’s agricultural development for a time became the real story. Here is that story through Southern Metropolis Daily, shared via Sohu.com.
The source for the Southern Metropolis Daily story was the official People’s Daily, citing once again Hunan’s propaganda department. The authorities, clearly were working overtime to reverse an embarrassing case of state-driven fake news.
In recent weeks and months, grumbling from Chinese diplomats and state media about how Western media report prejudicially on China has been nearly constant. In many cases, these criticisms have not just addressed particular cases of reporting but have sought to broadly undermine the credibility of the Western practice and experience of journalism – depicting it as hypocritical, corrupted by capital, and doing the bidding of foreign governments bent on “interference” and containment.
One particular aspect of China’s continued attack on Western journalism that might puzzle outside observers is the insistence at the highest-levels of the Party-state press apparatus that the CCP upholds the principles of “objectivity, impartiality, truth and accuracy” – as a commentary in the People’s Dailyargued back in February in the midst of the storm over Ofcom’s decision to withdraw the UK broadcast license for CGTN.
At a press conference this week, MOFA spokesperson Hua Chunying too threw the old ideal of “objectivity” back in the face of the Western press, saying, as she accused the Wall Street Journal of ‘smearing the safety and effectiveness of Chinese vaccines,” that she hoped “media organizations can follow the principles of authenticity, objectivity and justice, [and] report on the epidemic and vaccines in an impartial and fact-based manner.”
China’s talk of objectivity seems like rank hypocrisy until you have a better grasp of what officials and official media actually mean by this word. So what does it mean, in the CCP political context, to be “objective”?
In his excellent review of the writings of Eileen Chang, Perry Link one wrote that everything in Communist China worked “under blankets of jargon.” In this world, in which the control of language remained central to political rule, people were immersed and educated in the vocabulary of pretense. “There are certain things you are supposed to say and certain ways you are supposed to say them,” Link wrote. “‘Tell the truth!’ is a command that you recite your lies correctly.”
Link’s observations, and the insights to be gleaned from Chang’s prose, remain as relevant today as they were six years ago or sixty. In Xi Jinping’s “new era,” as in Mao’s day, the truth is determined by the Party. The most fundamental truth, moreover, is the centrality of the Party itself, which is why the project of “telling China’s story well” is formally tied, clear as day in the official discourse, to the Party and its narrative of competence and legitimacy.
If the truth is defined as the story of the Party’s competence, then the failure to tell that story – to “inject more positive energy,” as Hua said this week – is to lack objectivity. But we can understand this logic also by peeling away those “blankets of jargon.”
In 2019, an article in the Guangming Daily newspaper, published by the Central Propaganda Department, laid out the key points on information control as reflected in a decision from the Fourth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the CCP, which spoke of “improving the system of public opinion channelling for correct guidance” (完善坚持正确导向的舆论引导工作机制). This phrase contains two key terms in the press control lexicon, “correct guidance of public opinion” (正确舆论导向) and “public opinion channelling” (舆论引导), both essentially pointing to the need for the CCP to control the process of agenda-setting and maintain regime stability through the management of news and information, with Party-state media playing a core role in guiding the agenda on breaking stories and hot-button issues.
In a section on “emphasizing positive news” (坚持正面宣传为主), another press control principle emerging in the aftermath of the June 4th crackdown in 1989, and which Xi Jinping stressed as a lynchpin of news and propaganda policy in both 2013 and 2016, the Guangming Daily article wrote:
The emphasis on positive propaganda means objectively reflecting the mainstream and essence of contemporary Chinese society, as well as the need to stimulate the powerful force of the entire Party and entire society to unite and advance, overcoming the various difficulties and challenges we face. Adhering to positive propaganda demands that we focus on the Chinese path, on Chinese theory, on the Chinese system, the Chinese spirit, on Chinese strengths, and that we properly explain and propagate Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era . . .
Here we can see clearly how Party-state propaganda, emphasizing positives, is regarded by the CCP as an “objective reflection” of Chinese society. The notion here of the “mainstream” also refers back to the Party’s dominance of the agenda.
Creating social cohesion and political legitimacy through the manufacture of “mainstream” views of the positivity of the path and the system is the point of journalism for the Party.
Today is the 24th World Press Freedom Day. First conceived three decades ago at a UNESCO conference in Namibia still regarded as having catalyzed global press freedom efforts, the day has been commemorated every year since 1998. In its concept note for this year’s conference, with the theme “Information as a Public Good,” UNESCO said that a key objective would be encouraging greater information literacy in order to “enable people to recognize and value, as well as defend and demand, journalism as a vital part of information as a public good.”
As it has for a quarter century, the UN event passed quietly today in China. There was no mention in mainland Chinese media of “World Press Freedom Day,” in either official Party-state media or in the country’s increasingly straightjacketed commercial press.
As for social media platforms, one rare mention appeared on UNESCO’s official Weibo account, which sought to explain the importance of commemorating the day:
Our reasons for establishing this international day are: To remind countries to respect pledges for press freedom To call on media professionals to consider press freedom and professional ethics To express support for the media To remember those journalists who had given their lives for journalism . . . .
A post made today by UNESCO on its official account on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
Rather hopefully, the UNESCO account topped its post with the hashtag #WorldPressFreedomDay (#世界新闻自由日). Users clicking on the hashtag, however, were given an error message that read simply: “We’re sorry, there are no results for ‘World Press Freedom Day.’”
It cannot be true that there are “no results.” There is at least one other post from UNESCO alone using the hashtag. That post reads: “There are many questions that we don’t have the means to ask. If journalists are not free to ask questions, we will not know the answers.”
Click on the hashtag “#WordPressFreedomDay” in UNESCO’s post and you get a “no results” notice.
But the bottom line is that World Press Freedom Day is something about which Chinese are not free to ask. One user who had clearly attempted to learn more by clicking the tag wrote in a comment under the UNESCO post: “This TAG is already gone.” A search for World Press Freedom Day through Baidu, China’s top-ranking search engine, also turns up no current coverage or discussion of the issue.
A comment posted from a Chinese reader underneath UNESCO’s Weibo post on World Press Freedom Day reads: “The TAG is already gone.”
Nor in recent days has there been any mention of “press freedom” or “World Press Freedom Day” from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, despite remarks from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 28 at a roundtable to commemorate the international day, during which he talked about a “democratic vision for global information,” and singled out China as a source of concern for the US and its allies. “The real concern here is Beijing’s use of propaganda and disinformation overseas through state-owned media enterprises and platforms with the purpose, in part, of interfering or undermining democracy while restricting freedom of the press and speech in China,” Blinken said.
World Press Freedom Day is a no-go area in China, and near silence has attended the day since its inception. This is because the very concept of a press that operates independently in the public interest is politically unacceptable in China, where the Communist Party has long demanded that the media are subservient to itself as the arbiter of the public interest. The term “press freedom,” or xinwen ziyou (新闻自由), has been regarded as sensitive since the earliest years of the People’s Republic of China, and has often been attacked and dismissed as a bourgeois fancy of the West – or worse, as a tool wielded by a hypocritical West, led by the United States, to defile and slander China and the CCP.
“Press freedom” is rarely ever used in the Chinese media, where less ideologically charged phrases like “freedom of expression” (言论自由) are preferrable if references are necessary. Under Xi Jinping, the term “press freedom” has slipped from sensitive territory into the formally taboo zone. An internal communique released in 2013 by the CCP’s Central Office, which has since been known as “Document 9,” listed “the West’s idea of journalism” among seven restricted ideas. “Some people, under the pretext of espousing ‘freedom of the press,’” said the communique, “promote the West’s idea of journalism and undermine our country’s principle that the media should be infused with the spirit of the Party.”
“So-Called Press Freedom”
One of the most common contexts for the appearance of “press freedom” is the longer phrase “so-called press freedom” (所谓的新闻自由). In the wake of the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators on June 4, 1989, the People’s Dailyreported that Xu Zhen (徐震), the head of the journalism school at Shanghai’s Fudan University, advocated deeper “political education” for journalists.
During the unrest, he said, some people in society had raised up so-called “freedom of the press” and the students had followed suit, marching on the streets with banners saying “freedom of the press, give me back my [Word Economic] Herald.” In fact, these students did not know what freedom of the press meant. In a class society, there is no freedom of the press beyond class. Some people advocate “freedom of the press,” but does this mean they have the freedom to oppose the major decisions of the Party’s Central Committee and to incite the overthrow of the legitimate government?
In 2005, a commentary in the paper took aim at what it characterized as the corrupt “basic nature” of “the West’s press freedom.”
For a long time, there have been certain people who do not understand the true meaning of freedom of the press, or because they do not know enough about the world and the reality of journalism today, they bear misconceptions in their minds. Essentially, there are two main aspects: First, they blindly worship the West’s press freedom, thinking the West is the paradise of press freedom; second, they think press freedom means reporting whatever they want to report, reporting however they want to report, and being completely free from restrictions. In order to clarify the true meaning of press freedom and bring into play the rational guidance of press freedom, it is necessary to revisit this issue.
The commentary, echoing attacks going back to the 1950s, argued at length that press freedom in the US was a figment, that speech was severely restricted by capital on the one hand and political interests on the other. Noting the mid-air collision of a US Navy intelligence aircraft and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea in April 2001, the commentary said: “This is so-called ‘freedom of the press,’ a freedom that distorts the truth and puts lives and human rights at risk.”
Revealing the CCP’s view of “press freedom” as being defined ultimately by the Party’s own interests and its ostensible representation of the people’s interests, the commentary then spoke of “correct guidance of public opinion” (正确的舆论导向) – the policy, implemented in the aftermath of June Fourth, that essentially avers that the Party must “guide” and control speech and the media in order to maintain political control:
China’s freedom of the press must be conducive to economic development, social stability and the improvement of people’s living standards, and journalists must adhere to the correct guidance of public opinion, promoting the main theme, so that the news media can provide a strong ideological guarantee and public opinion support in the great cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. This is also the essence of freedom of the press.
Such a bald-faced affirmation of the CCP’s media control policies couched in the language of “press freedom” is exceptionally rare. In the vast majority of cases, “press freedom” is treated as negative and oppositional, warranting only suspicion.
More recently, a report in the People’s Daily on September 12, 2019, addressing protests in Hong Kong, said that “black hands behind the scenes are the root of the Hong Kong riots, and Hong Kong’s so-called press freedom has reached a point of absurdity.” In March 2020, as China responded angrily to “discriminatory measures” against Chinese state media in the US – referring to the move by the Trump administration to designate such media as state operatives – the People’s Dailywrote that the measures had “exposed the naked double standard of America’s so-called press freedom.”
The phrase “press freedom day” is mentioned in the official People’s Daily newspaper just three times in its 75-year history, and only one of these mentions pertains to the UN’s international day.
The official promotional image for this year’s World Press Freedom Day.
The first two mentions, appearing in 1959, make reference to an event held in Cuba just months after Fidel Castro had been named the country’s prime minister, and weeks after he had instituted agrarian reforms that broke up landholdings. A report on June 9 read: “Prime Minister Castro told the press at a conference to mark Press Freedom Day on July 7 that Cuba ‘will not change a single comma’ of the agrarian reform law. Castro stressed that although the agrarian reform has caused opposition, ‘the enemy has spurred the revolution forward.’”
The third mention, the only in the People’s Daily to date to reference the UN event, came on May 5, 2009, following comments in Washington by both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to mark World Press Freedom Day. On May 1, Obama had noted “the indispensable role played by journalists in exposing abuses of power,” and he had urged greater attention to the plight of journalists across the world who “find themselves in frequent peril.” Among these, he named in particular Chinese journalist Shi Tao (师涛) and Chinese political activist Hu Jia (胡佳).
A May 5, 2009, article in the People’s Dailyurged the United States to “respect the facts, take a correct view of China’s press freedom situation, respect China’s judicial sovereignty, and stop making careless remarks about China’s press freedom situation.” Chinese official media coverage following Obama’s criticism marked a high point for the appearance of “World Press Freedom Day” in China’s newspapers. But the coverage was uniform, with at least 37 papers and scores of websites all running a single release from the state-run China News Service that mirrored the People’s Daily article.
The most recent article in the People’s Daily to mention the term “press freedom” was a commentary on February 6, 2021, attributed to “Zhong Sheng” (钟声), a pen name used for important pieces on international affairs on which the leadership wishes to register its view. The commentary followed the decision by the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom), the government regulator for broadcasting and telecoms, to withdraw the UK broadcast license for China Global Television Network (CGTN), China’s state-run English-language satellite news channel. The “Zhong Sheng” article called the decision “a brutal suppression of Chinese media,” and said it had “fully exposed the falseness of the so-called press freedom flaunted by the UK.”
