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 Daily argued 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 . . . .

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.”

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.

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 Daily reported 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 Daily wrote 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 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 Daily urged 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.”

Last week was a week of rancor in Chinese diplomacy, as Xinjiang-related sanctions from the US, the UK and the European Union brought a wave of counter-sanctions and sanctimony from Chinese diplomats, and a scorched-earth campaign from Party-state media and affiliated social media accounts portraying any and all criticism as defamation and “blackmail.”

One of the nastiest turns occurred as the Chinese Embassy in Paris openly attacked scholar Antoine Bondaz, a researcher for the Foundation for Strategic Research, calling him a “thug” and a “troll.” Defending its conduct as France summoned the Chinese ambassador, Lu Shaye (卢沙野), to voice its strong objections, the embassy insisted that criticism of China would not be accepted:

If China’s national interests and image are threatened and damaged, our diplomats must rush up and defend them desperately. Some have for this reason given the label “wolf-warrior diplomacy.” If there are truly “wolf warriors,” this is because the “mad dogs” are too many and too fierce, including these “mad dogs” who tear China apart in the guise of scholarship and journalism. Some hope that China’s diplomacy can be “lamb diplomacy,” that we just sit quietly as the attacks come from outside. Such times have passed!

This contrast between “mad dogs” and “wolf warriors” seemed destined to catch on, and indeed it was instantly picked up by state media in China. A column on March 23 under the byline Shan Renping (单仁平), which often stands in for Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin (胡锡进), bore the headline: “If There are ‘Wolf Warriors,’ This is Because ‘Mad Dogs are Too Many and Too Fierce.” Another piece published through the news app of the Beijing Daily, run by the city’s propaganda department, similarly highlighted the “mad dog” line. “This talk of ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights,’ and ‘freedom’ is just the same old rhetoric,” said the commentary. “The same old script and a similar farce.”

The same old script indeed.

In recent years, as new digital platforms have come to dominate, the Chinese Party-state and its principal media have pushed a transformation of propaganda and public diplomacy. This is not just about global Twitter spats, but about the way public accounts on platforms like WeChat have been used to viralize the idea within China, whenever it suits the objectives of the leadership, that the dignity of the country is under attack. The New York Times, in its report Monday on the phenomenon, termed this China’s “outrage machine.”

These tactics, which draw on a deep well of historical resentment, are digital-era echoes of past mobilization campaigns. For the Chinese Communist Party, online rage is the conflagration needed to suck the oxygen out of any debate over substance, and distract attention away from criticism. Facts and hard questions on issues like Xinjiang are consumed in the blaze. The trouble is, fires are difficult to contain. The most recent over H&M could send China’s investment deal with the EU up in flames. So much for constructive diplomacy.

But for those who remember the world before the WeChat public account, before the instant rage machine of microblogging, going back even to the youthful days of the Party press of the 1950s and 1960s, much of this may seem familiar. Mao Zedong had his “outrage machine” too, and the anger fomented internally over perceived enemies externally – from “hostile forces” to Soviet revisionists – was very often about building a wall of rage against internal criticism. We should recognize this common lineage, while acknowledging that what is happening today is new and unique, and global in ways CCP outrage could never be in the past.

As it happens, the catchy contrast between “mad dogs” and “wolf warriors”  is one key that can help us look back on the historic waves of furor and indignation unleashed by the CCP. Despite the apparent novelty of Ambassador Lu Shaye’s viral remark, “mad dogs” have been around for a very long time.

The Dogs of Civil War

In its earliest appearances in the People’s Daily, dating back to the Chinese Civil War, the phrase “mad dog” spoke to the depravity of the Kuomintang and its soldiers and officers. One story from August 13, 1947, explained how “the most honest militiaman,” comrade Wang Mingyi (王明义), a communist fighter in a Shandong village, was interrogated by Nationalist soldiers following an incursion and bravely resisted revealing the location of CCP cadres:

Thereupon, a group of enemies pressed Mingyi to the ground like mad dogs, first striking him 20 times with a club, and then 40 more times before hanging him up from a tree and beating him with a leather shoe until he could not straighten his body. These mad dogs still wanted the guns, and to find the cadres, and comrade Mingyi finally said resolutely: “The guns were handed over to the district office, and I don’t know where the cadres went!”

Many stories at the time were war stories of this sort, conveying a sense of justice, and sometimes also a disdainful sense of humor, about the showdown with the Kuomintang. One story described an enemy tank that made a desperate turn toward communist combatants and became stuck in the mud, its main gun facing downward at an impossible angle as it fired at the earth “like a mad dog.”

By January 1949, as the People’s Liberation Army was in the midst of its Pingjin Campaign to take northern China, one top trade union official was quoted in the paper as exclaiming: “The Kuomintang war criminals are like a pack of mad dogs. We must chase them to the ends of the earth and make sure they are brought to justice, dunked down into the water. We cannot let them go. If we let them go, they might raise their hackles again and turn to bite us.” Several weeks later, army commander Zhao Shoushan, a former KMT general who had switched allegiances, was similarly quoted by the People’s Daily, suggesting this had become something of stock phrase: “The KMT gang is already like a mad dog facing death. Right now it poses as a begging dog, but we must not fall into its trap and allow it to catch its breath, lest it turn and bite us again.”

American Imperialist Dogs

Earlier this month, China’s government issued its Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2020, sharply criticizing alleged human rights abuses in the US, including “comprehensive, systematic and continuous” racism, and what Xinhua called “Washington’s incompetent pandemic containment.” These problems were framed as a repudiation of any and all US claims to leadership on human rights. China’s government has issued similar reports annually since 1998, in direct response to the country reports on human rights practices issued by the US State Department.

The rancor over US government reports has echoes deep in the pre-reform era. On September 8, 1949, the People’s Daily criticized the China White Paper issued by the Truman administration, saying it had “exposed the new conspiracies by American imperialism to invade our country.” Referring to Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s assertion that “democratic individualism will reassert itself” in China, and should be supported, the article fulminated:

One sentence [in the white paper] says: “Democratic individualists will revolt against the CCP.” This was likely referring to Hu Shih, who, when the mad dog Chiang Kai-shek was about to be beaten to death, wanted to mobilize the powerless lice to bite the Chinese people to death.

Hu Shih, the famous writer and thinker (and leader of the 1919 new culture movement) who from 1938 to 1942 had served as the KMT government’s ambassador to the US, was already by this time the frequent topic of bitter criticism in the People’s Daily. While president of National Peking University (later Peking University) from 1945, Hu had publicly opposed Marxism and advocated “reforming drop by drop” (一点一滴的改造), a notion bitterly opposed by Mao and his revolutionaries as bourgeois nonsense. In 1948, Hu Shih fled the city as communist forces closed in, returning to the United States. The intellectual was by this time “Hu Shih the running dog of American imperialism,” and his ideas – including the pragmatism of his teacher at Cornell University, John Dewey – were the “powerless lice” biting at the Chinese people.

As the PRC was founded, and Chiang run off to Taiwan, much of China’s “mad dog” ire turned on the United States after 1949. The Korean War broke out in June 1950, and by October that year Chinese soldiers from the People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) had crossed the Yalu River and engaged in the conflict. On October 27, 1949, an article dedicated to China’s “fighting heroes” declared:

The sound of artillery in Korea shakes our hearts daily. The massacre of peaceful residents of Korea by the US Empire reminds us even more of the atrocities committed by the Japanese fascists against the Chinese people. We cannot tolerate this beastly behavior of the US empire!

In order to save itself from crushing defeat, the mad dog of the US empire is getting crazier and crazier, mobilizing all available US troops in the Far East at all costs.

American bombs, said the paper, had “opened flowers across China,” as volunteers sprang up to head to the front lines. “We cannot allow this mad dog to destroy world peace,” it said.

The show trial against former Hungarian Politburo member László Rajk in Budapest in September 1949, which marked the launch of Stalin’s anti-Titoist purge in Hungary and the removal of competing political parties, was reported in a bloodthirsty account in the People’s Daily, Rajk seen as an agent for the US-led imperialist West. As the paper reported the words of one prosecutor in the Budapest court:

Our people demand the execution of these criminals, and I, as representative of the prosecution, concur in this demand. We must crush the head of the viper. Such a verdict will show every imperialist agent and traitor what awaits him. There is only one defense against mad dogs: destroy them!

Stalin was China’s friend, and the US was the chief enemy in Europe, Asia and right across the world. “Let us unite together like steel,” said an article on December 5, 1950, “and beat to death this mad dog of US imperialism.” The US was “plainly a mad dog,” was “already becoming a mad dog.” In 1958, in the midst of the Second Taiwan Straits Crisis, as the PRC shelled the islands of Kinmen and the US came to the aid of the Republic of China (ROC), the People’s Daily reported that “the mad dog of US imperialism has again provoked 600 million Chinese people.”

In 1962, as the US ramped up its military support for South Vietnam, the issue had shifted but the language was consistent. Reporting on a bombing campaign by US forces, the paper said that “enemy bombers again bombarded indiscriminately like mad dogs, covering helicopters as they made their descent.” That same year, a poem in the People’s Daily called “The Original Yankee” (美国佬的原形) disparaged US notions of freedom, and was accompanied by an unflattering image of Uncle Sam strolling away from a pile of bones, his feet leaving dog prints behind. The poem read:

America, “free” America
Standing before human civilization,
You are naked, you stink to high heaven,
Like a mad dog scampering about.

Toward the end of the 1950s, following Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and disagreements over a host of other issues, China’s relations with the Soviet Union steadily soured. There were new “mad dogs” to join the old.

Soviet Revisionist Dogs

By 1960, the schism between China and its old ally was a fait accompli, Mao denouncing Soviet leaders as “revisionist traitors.” The USSR joined the US in China’s dog house, the People’s Daily growling that the Chinese people, “armed with Mao Zedong Thought,” were undefeatable. “We must, in the spirit of ‘beating the dog that has fallen in the water,’ strike without mercy the mad dog of Soviet socialist imperialism.”

As the Sino-Soviet split drove a rift through the international communist movement, just one country in Europe, Albania, chose to stand with China. The USSR retaliated by withdrawing its economic and military assistance to Albania, but China stepped in, providing shipments of grain to the country even as the Great Famine at home claimed millions of lives. The Albanian alliance was a necessity for Mao Zedong, a political vanity for which the Chinese people paid dearly. Throughout the 1960s, the Albanian friendship was warmly promoted in the People’s Daily.

In a piece called “The Heroic Women of Albania” (英雄的阿尔巴尼亚妇女), the paper told the story of one female commando named Little Fado who was captured by “fascist bandits” during the Second World War and held with other female combatants in the hazy and damp dungeon of an old castle. Interrogating her, the fascists yanked off her five-star cap and threw it to the ground. They ordered her to reveal the location of her unit. Here is the climax of that story:

Her lungs were about to explode, but she calmly picked up her hat, kissed the red stars, and then put it squarely on her head again. The enemy was so furious that they barked like mad dogs and decided then and there to shoot her. Before the end came, Little Fado shouted to her sisters in their cells: ‘Destroy the German and Italian fascist devils! Sisters, I am honored, because I will die like a true partisan. Victory must be ours!”

But following the Lushan Conference of 1959, at which many Party members were highly critical of Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, the “mad dogs” were not just China’s external enemies. As Mao sought to stave off criticism, the aspersion was leveled at internal foes as well.

Dogs in the House

In the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, in March 1966, General Luo Ruiqing, a veteran revolutionary who had been on the Long March, was branded as part of an “anti-Party clique” that included Peng Zhen, Yang Shangkun and Lu Dingyi. Luo attempted suicide by leaping from the roof of a three-story building. Though he survived, paralyzed, his legs shattered, the public attacks continued. On October 28, 1967, the People’s Daily ran a piece alleging that Luo, with the support of “China’s Khrushchev” (meaning Liu Shaoqi), had “engaged in a sinister conspiracy to turn the army against the Party.” The article described Luo Ruiqing as “scurrying like a mad dog” as he sought to disrupt the study of Mao Zedong Thought within the army’s ranks.

Another article in 1968, laden with political insults, branded the writer Zhou Yang as an “agent in the arts” for “China’s Khrushhev”:

Zhou Yang and the capitalist roaders of the old film association think they’ve performed “well,”  that they “remain useful.” This word exposes their secret all at once, that they believe this mad dog can still serve their counter-revolutionary criminal activities.

[They] must be materially and politically generous in feeding this mad dog, because this mad dog is very good at “biting people,” and can be used to attack the party and attack socialism.

Chinese life became a chorus of rabid denunciations during the Cultural Revolution. And of course it  was not just senior Party officials and intellectuals that were tossed into the dog house. A March 1971 article filed from Zhejiang province offered a chilling glimpse into a struggle sessions unfolding in one community. At one point, a member of the community stands up to make a damning disclosure: “That ‘dog that doesn’t bark’ on our team, Jiang Ruilu, has now become a mad dog,” they said. “He has torn off his disguise, revealing his fierceness. He disobeys commands, and provokes divisions between cadres and the group.”

The Pack of Four

The downfall of the Gang of Four in October 1976, just one month after Mao Zedong’s death, ushered in another period of dramatic change. The political faction, led by Mao Zedong’s fourth wife, Jiang Qing, was blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution – and these “criminals” were quickly, well, dog-piled.

On December 16, 1976, the People’s Daily published an article on Dazhai village in Shanxi province, which in 1963 had been the focus of a vast propaganda campaign by Mao Zedong calling on farmers across the country to emulate the community’s example. The whole thing was a vast manufactured drama, PLA soldiers brought in to do the vast construction projects attributed to self-sacrificing villagers. Guo Fenglian, the top leader in Dazhai, was favored by Jiang Qing, and often used in political campaigns.

But as the Gang of Four was crushed, the village became an object of ridicule. The People’s Daily profiled one poor old farmer in Dazhai,  Jia Chengyong, who fiercely denounced Jiang Qing:

“I know best who loves Dazhai and who hates Dazhai. The beloved Premier Zhou visited Dazhai three times and sat on the beds of the poor peasants to ask for warmth and affection; the big ambitious Jiang Qing visited Dazhai twice and bit people everywhere like a mad dog and hurt socialism everywhere like a vicious wolf.”

In a separate article, another farmer, Jia Chengyong, was quoted saying exactly the same thing. Zhou Enlai had visited the village three times, Jiang Qing just twice. Madame Mao was a “mad dog,” a “vicious wolf”  and a White Bone Spirit, referring to a demon that appears in the classic The Journey West. “The big ambitious Jiang Qing came twice two Dazhai, biting people like a mad dog, and harming socialism like a vicious wolf. For three generations we have loathed this White Bone Spirit.”

Mad Dogs and Black Hands

As economic reforms took hold after 1978 and through the 1980s, China embarked on a new path. The calumnies of the pre-reform era faded as the focus economically turned from ideology toward pragmatism. In the media, there was corresponding push for “news reform” (新闻改革), rejecting the “falsehood, emptiness and bluster” (假大空)  that had dominated the Party-run press – really the Mao-run press – for more than two decades, fanning the flames of internal strife.

The tone of the press, and of politics, became more civil, and the insults and ad hominem attacks of the extreme left were far less welcome. In 1987, a letter to the editor in the People’s Daily cautioned against the volleying of defamatory insults by writers and journalists. Old habits died hard, and some still struggled to shake off the deep impact of decades of raw political hate and sloganeering. But the nation now had a new constitution, and a new system of laws protecting people from such attacks:

Since last year, some readers have written to this newspaper to reflect that some people use literary publications to attack, insult and slander others. These letters have increased particularly since the knowledge of the law has grown.

From the situation reflected by the readers and the reporter’s understanding of the situation, there are indeed some people (including some writers), who use the pens in their hands and the publications they hold, in the guise of writing real stories about real people, to act against the principles of literary creation, against the Constitution, and against the law, amounting even to criminal activities.

One reader in Hebei, Wang Faying, shared her own experience of being “insulted and slandered” by a writer for the magazine Women’s Literature (女子文学). Wang, a former statistician at an agricultural machinery company, understandably chafed against having been called a “specialized privateer,” a “peach-picker,” a “political liar,” a “pickpocket,” a “fraudster,” a “strangely tasting southern chicken,” a “rogue,” and a “mad dog.”

There was a clear whiff of democracy in the air by the second half of the decade. An article on August 10, 1987, shared the instructive story of an overbearing and power-hungry assistant director of a blanket factory in Hubei province, who became furious when his female employees did not support him in casting their ballots for him as a district people’s congress representative. He reportedly called the employees to his office and dressed them down: “I have raised a bunch of mad dogs,” he said. “You do not endorse me, but bite at me behind my back.” The article, “Violating Voters’ Democratic Rights” (侵犯选民民主权利), reported that the assistant director had been dismissed from his position.

The moment that brought a swift and brutal end to the openness and experimentation of the 1980s is one we all know. The violent suppression of po-democracy protests in June 1989 ushered in a new period of denunciation and finger-pointing, with a resurgence of hardline leftist discourse continuing  through to Deng Xiaoping’s “southern tour” in January-February 1992.

It will probably not surprise readers to learn that the next “mad dog” in the People’s Daily, appearing on June 25, 1989, was Liu Xiaobo, the scholar and human rights activist who would later become a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The article, a lengthy attack reprinted from the capital’s Beijing Daily, was called “Seizing the Black Hand Liu Xiaobo” (抓住刘晓波的黑手). Liu, a lecturer at Beijing Normal University, had been arrested and imprisoned at Qincheng Prison on June 5, the day after the massacre, accused of aiding the pro-democracy movement.

The People’s Daily article suggested Liu had been part of a foreign conspiracy, calling him “Liu Xiaobo who rushed back from the United States at the beginning of the turmoil.” Here was the unflattering portrait painted of the activist:

Liu Xiaobo has long been known as “a madman”, “a mad dog” and “a dark horse.” Since 1986 he has made a lot of noise by rejecting everything about China. After receiving his doctorate in literature from Beijing Normal University on June 25, 1988, he traveled to Norway to lecture on August 24, and after three months, he moved to the United States. Before he left the country, he wanted to drop a number of so-called “heavy bombs” against the Communist Party and the people, but he hid them for the time being because he was afraid they would “fizzle out” because he was about to leave the country. When he arrived abroad, he had nothing to worry about, so he tossed them one after the other.

The attack closed by saying that history “is not subject to the will of the reactionaries.” Liu Xiaobo’s dream was but an empty dream. “The people, and only the people, are the masters of this land of China,” it said.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the virulent rhetoric of “rabid dogs” faded once again. As the focus shifted back to rapid economic development, the nation was busy with matters of trade and investment. The society grew wealthier. The media, though still under Party control, diversified, and the internet ushered in a more connected China.

For the first time in the People’s Daily, there were actual mad dogs, rabid ones that had to be dealt with. A reader’s letter from August  13, 2006, argued the need to register dogs in the countryside and regularly vaccinate them to deal with rabies outbreaks. There was the problem of domestic violence, of fathers who show two faces to the family, one the “mad dog.” The paper, calling in 2011 for zero tolerance toward domestic violence, explained: “The ‘mad dog’ type of person can be a gambler, or a drug addict or have other bad habits, and no one can stop them from beating up people.”

At long last, “mad dogs” were dogs, or “mad dogs” were people, with real human problems. The point was not to dehumanize the subject and justify cruelty as payment for their political crimes.

Mad Dogs in the New Era

But the pendulum has swung back once again. There is a new rancor in China’s diplomatic relations, and in the domestic reverberation of its outrages, that is reminiscent, like so much else in the Xi era, of politics in China’s past. That rancor has focused on criticism of China, and on perceived threats to its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Comments like those made by Chinese Ambassador Lu Shaye in France are part of a larger turn toward uncivil and dehumanizing speech directed at those who criticize the country or are perceived as its enemies. Earlier this week, a Chinese diplomat on Twitter called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “boy,” accusing him of destroying the relationship between China and Canada, and in the next breath branded Trudeau “a running dog” of the United States.

The diplomat, in fact, was not stepping out of line. A nasty relic of the pre-reform era, the term “running dog,” has in recent years been largely reserved in the Party-state media for discussion of history. But it now seems to be creeping back. Generally speaking, such Cold War rhetoric has been normalized, despite frequent calls in the Party’s own People’s Daily and other state media to avoid Cold War thinking and Cold war talk. Last July, after Canada’s withdrawal from its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, the Global Times said Chinese experts had “slammed Canada’s decision, saying it shows Canada is a ‘running dog’ of the US.” In October 2020, the People’s Daily ran a warning on page seven to Taiwan’s Intelligence Bureau over alleged spying and “sabotage activities.” The article urged the bureau not to “continue to act as the ‘hawks and hounds’ and ‘running dogs’ of the Tsai Ing-wen administration.”

The first re-emergence of the “mad dog” to address current affairs in the People’s Daily in the Xi era came in August 2019, as protests in Hong Kong grew increasingly rancorous, and at times violent. On August 17, an article in the paper reported comments from members of the legal profession in Hong Kong decrying violence, including an attack on a reporter from the Global Times:

During the illegal assembly at the Hong Kong International Airport, the mob obstructed and pushed the passengers, and some mainland passengers and journalists were tied up, beaten and abused by the mob. Some Hong Kong legal professionals have pointed out in interviews and articles that the mob have acted like “mad dogs,” and there is no escaping criminal responsibility.

The point here, as in the case of the Party’s “mad dogs” of the pre-reform era and the attack on Liu Xiaobo, was to dehumanize the party-state’s critics, to impute lunacy and unreason. This removes the need to grapple with the substance of real concerns. Mad dogs are a menace. Period. There is no sense in coaxing them, petting or feeding them. They must be caged, muzzled and removed – whatever it takes to keep the people safe. In this way, it becomes a simple leap from the dog’s madness to the party-state’s reason and legitimacy. Silencing criticism is necessary to inoculate China from rabid criticism.

What is most disturbing about the “mad dog” in the new era, however, is the way such attacks are applied not just to national governments, or “the West,” or political elites like Justin Trudeau, but to scholars like Antoine Bondaz or Joanne Smith Finley. We cannot forgot the resolve of the Chinese Embassy in France as it insisted, in the face of criticism, that China must defend itself against “these ‘mad dogs’ who tear China apart in the guise of scholarship and journalism.”

Scholarship and journalism must stand before its peers and the public, before a global community that is free to speak, free to seek the facts, free to criticize and free to listen. Hu Shih, the intellectual the People’s Daily attacked early on as a “mad dog,” had in fact been called the same by Chiang Kai-shek. He was a critic of the KMT, a critic of the CCP. But above all he was a critic. It was his independence as a thinker and writer that commanded the attention of the thinking public. “Hu was known as a scholar who did not belong to any party, and that’s how he was seen in society,” one researcher has said. “For this reason, as soon as Hu was published, this won the sympathy of society, particularly of the intellectual class, who were very happy about it.”

As comments in online forums in China about its international relations call on the country to “do battle with the mad dogs,” independent voices from scholarship and journalism are invisibilized. The diplomacy of the PRC is lost, meanwhile, in a chorus of howling over “wolves” and “mad dogs.”

Yesterday, confusing things even further, the Chinese Embassy in Ireland made a post to Twitter – a platform banned inside China – that brought sheep back into the cacophony. “Who is the wolf?” the embassy asked. “Some people accused China for so-called ‘wolf warrior diplomacy.’ In his well-known fable, Aesop described how the Wolf accused the Lamb of committing offences.”

What did the embassy mean be related a tale whose moral is that the tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny? As though hastening to explain, the embassy said in the very same tweet: “The wolf is the wolf, not the lamb. BTW, China is not the lamb.”

Was the embassy averring that China is in fact the wolf, ready with excuses, pointing its accusing finger at perceived offenders in order to justify devouring them? Certainly, as the diplomats insisted, China is not the lamb in this confusedly allegorical message.

Understandably, puzzlement and ridicule justifiably ensued. But one small shift in the reading of the post from the Chinese Embassy in Ireland makes the allegory work. As the scornful baying about wolves and dogs grows louder, swallowing up all meaningful dialogue, all real diplomacy, along with all facts and legitimate questions – isn’t it painfully clear?

Speech is the lamb.

According with predictions ahead of the first high-level talks between China and the United States since President Joe Biden took office in January, yesterday’s diplomatic exchange in Alaska was cantankerous. Officials in Washington signaled early on that they had no “unrealistic expectations,” and for its part China’s foreign ministry remained stiff-lipped, cautioning the US against venturing into contentious areas like Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

The tone on the meetings is expectedly muted in today’s edition of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party – the instinct being, no doubt, to remain cool on talks still underway. The newspaper is preoccupied on page one with trumpeting the “New Era” (新时代) under General Secretary Xi Jinping, with a soaring paean to the “core” that dials the glory story back to the “golden autumn of 2012.”

The continued uplifting of Xi Jinping is of course also an issue of paramount importance to China’s foreign relations. The transformation of Chinese politics and society that has resulted from this tectonic shift has contributed substantially, for years already, to growing anxieties about China.

Turning back to the meetings, however, we have two pieces in the People’s Daily today, both on page three, that strike a firm tone on relations. The first, just under the photograph as the center of the page, was filed from Anchorage by reporter Li Zhiwei (李志伟). It reports language from Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai (崔天凯) insisting that China “will not compromise on core interests.”

The second, just below the first, is a report based on statements early yesterday in Beijing by Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Zhao Lijian (赵立坚). “Whether the dialogue can achieve positive results depends on the joint efforts of both sides,” Zhao is quoted as saying. “The US side should take cues from the Chinese side, conducting the dialogue in a sincere and constructive manner.”

This message is typical for China’s foreign ministry, and it has been delivered in roughly the same way for years and years in myriad contexts. Productive dialogue requires sincerity and mutual respect, and so on. But here is what Zhao says next: “Attempts to engage in ‘microphone diplomacy’ and ‘bandwagoning’  are a waste of effort and useless.”

This language epitomizes the colorful combativeness of Chinese diplomacy in the “New Era,” what has been termed “wolf warrior diplomacy” (战狼外交). The terms, one youthful the other middle-aged, merit a closer look for what they tell us about China’s foreign relations against the backdrop of its domestic politics.

Viral Foreign Policy

Phrases like the second here, “bandwagoning,” represent a departure from the stiff diplomatic language of the past, and they speak to crucial fact that foreign affairs in China today responds to and utilizes, perhaps more than at any time in the PRC’s history, currents of nationalism and populism.  The transformation of the information space has meant that Chinese, despite media controls, are more connected to world events – and more enabled to talk about them. This means the language of diplomacy must change, becoming versatile and appealing, so that the CCP can simultaneously signal its positions externally and inspire support for these positions internally.

Enter the diplomatic neologism, designed for its viral nature, and its capacity to channel events into themes that are both reductive and deeply evocative. Let’s just consider the term “bandwagoning,” or daijiezou (带节奏), the second employed by Zhao Lijian. This is an online term that first emerged as online gaming slang in Chinese eSports and from such team-based multiplayer games as League of Legends (英雄联盟). It refers to the way an experienced player can organize their virtual teammates to launch a tough and coordinated attack that “elevates the tempo” (带起一波节奏).

Beyond its color, what does such a term accomplish for China’s foreign ministry? The reference is youthful, appealing (or so is the hope) to a generation of youth in China who are actively engaged online. It invites them to view the US-China talks as a high-stakes face-off, as an eSports event tournament of us-versus-them.

Those who find this to be too much of a leap would do well to read up on recent history and the phenomenon of cyber-nationalism in China, such as the 2016 Facebook crusade against Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and the 2018 online mobilization against Mercedes-Benz for an Instagram post referencing a quote from the Dalai Lama. Young nationalists in China have already mobilized online in ways that impact foreign relations, and the process very much resembles a multiplayer game.

Though a bit more colorful than much of the CCP’s official discourse, the term “microphone diplomacy,” or maikefeng waijiao (麦克风外交), is an older term in the lexicon of contentious relations that has been more recently embraced in China’s foreign policy. The term emerges in China’s official discourse in the early 1980s, referencing Cold War standoffs between the Soviet Union and the West. The first article with the term in the People’s Daily is a report from February 1, 1984, filed from London, that quotes then former British Foreign Secretary Lord Peter Carrington as urging against “microphone diplomacy” toward the USSR in favor of dialogue. The term suggests, in this context, grandstanding over differences and criticism rather than engaging in productive exchange. The next two appearances, in 1993 and 1996 respectively, also reference events outside of China.

“Microphone diplomacy” made its first formal entry into Chinese political discourse to reference China’s relations with foreign countries on July 12, 2014, in a commentary in the People’s Daily attributed to “Zhong Sheng” (钟声), a pen name used in the paper since November 2008 for important pieces on international affairs on which the leadership wishes to register its view. Referencing US-China relations, the commentary said: “The fact is that China and the US have an important common interest in maintaining freedom of navigation and safeguarding maritime security, and can fully cooperate effectively. As two major powers, China and the US have their own dignity and responsibilities, and engaging in ‘microphone diplomacy’ will only complicate the issue.”

Since 2014, “microphone diplomacy” has become something of a permanent fixture of Chinese diplomacy.

But the talk of avoiding grandstanding over differences entailed by “microphone diplomacy” is arguably belied by the often extreme grandstanding on foreign relations that is actively encouraged by Party-state media through the viral exploitation of nationalistic memes. Consider, for example, the provocative messages shared today through the official Weibo account of the People’s Daily, so constrained in its print edition.

The first contrasts an images from the 1901 signing of the Boxer Protocol (辛丑条约) between the Qing Empire and the Eight-Nation Alliance, regarded as one of a number of unequal treaties to which China was subjected, and an image from yesterday’s talks.

No other commentary is provided with the post, but the implication is clear. The People’s Daily is encouraging Chinese who might share such viral content in the view that the talks are taking place in an atmosphere of complete disrespect for China, adding to the deep historical scorecard of indignities – running from the Opium Wars to the Treaty of Versailles and the “Shandong question” and onward through to the 21st century.

The second post is a graphic that reads, in prominent type, “The Chinese won’t eat this from the US” (中国人不吃美国这一套), and includes a list of grievances rejecting US meddling in China’s internal affairs, including over Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

Next comes a partly bilingual version of the same message, in arresting red and white, a shareable declaration of fundamental resistance to American criticism and meddling.

Following talks yesterday, US officials noted of China that “exaggerated diplomatic presentations often are aimed at a domestic audience.” They might just as well have called it “microphone diplomacy.” “The Chinese delegation . . . seems to have arrived intent on grandstanding, focused on public theatrics and dramatics over substance,” one senior administration official was quoted as saying.

Terms like “bandwagoning,” accompanied by viral messages like those above that seek to provoke and exploit domestic reactions, suggest that the public theatrics are here to stay, that they are a crucial component of Chinese diplomacy in the “New Era.” Involving and engaging the digital Chinese public, in ways that curtail substantive discussion at home, has already become a salient feature of this new multiplayer diplomacy.

One week ago, Li Zhanshu (栗战书), chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s 13th National People’s Congress, delivered his “work report” to the committee, in which he outlined the country’s accomplishments over the past year and sounded a triumphant note ahead of the centennial of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. A rather verbose “abstract” (摘要) of Li’s report was issued on March 9, but the full-text was made available only yesterday.

Slicing through this thick layer-cake of Chinese newspeak, which totals 13,693 words, just over 20 percent larger than in the 2020 report, there are a number of trends worth noting.

First, there is a more than negligible rise of language signalling the power of Xi Jinping. Appearances of “Xi Jinping” more than doubled in this year’s report, and use of Xi’s “banner term,” or qizhiyu (旗帜语), increased. Several other permutations of “Xi thought” for various policy areas were given greater prominence in this year’s report.

The following graph compares how various Xi-related terms appeared in Li Zhanshu’s reports this year and last.

As we have said repeatedly at CMP, the shortening of Xi Jinping’s lengthy banner term, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想), is the end-game in this drawn-out rhetorical game. The ambition of Xi and his acolytes is almost certainly to achieve the shortening of this unwieldy banner term to the more potent “Xi Jinping Thought” with the approach the 20^th National Congress of the CCP, which should be held in the fall of 2022. Another possible landmark, much closer, is the Party’s 100^th anniversary on July 1 this year.

While some scholarship and reporting outside China has prematurely used “Xi Jinping Thought” to discuss Xi’s banner term, it is important to understand that this transformation has by no means been achieved. Ever since the 19th National Congress of the CCP in November 2017, Xi has sought to cross this rhetorical river by feeling the stones. When possible, testing the waters, those around him have promoted the application of “Xi thought” to concrete policy areas, such as rule of law, military affairs and diplomacy.

In last year’s NPC Standing Committee report, however, Li Zhanshu mentioned just two forms of “Xi thought.” These were “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy,” clearly associated with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who last summer inaugurated a new center for the buzzword; and “Xi Jinping Thought on Adhering to and Improving the NPC System.” Dealing directly with the NPC, this particular “thought” is solidly in Li Zhanshu’s territory, and the chairman has held a number of special meetings on the topic. Not surprisingly, the fundamental character of this system is the leadership of the CCP under the principle of democratic centralism.

In this year’s report, three additional forms of “Xi thought” are added: “Xi Jinping Thought on Thought on Rule of Law”; “Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military”; and “Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization.” The first of these gets prominent play, mentioned six separate times. This is significant, though not altogether surprising, considering that the term has been ascendant since the last quarter of 2020 and Xi’s “important speech” to the Central Work Conference on the Comprehensive Rule of Law.

These mentions of “Xi thought” can be regarded as steps in the journey toward an eventual “Xi Jinping Thought” banner. But perhaps it is better to view them as steps, sometimes faltering, in a delicate dance in which the music is always changing. The epidemic last year temporarily changed the tune, and we saw a corresponding downturn in talk of “Xi thought” during the first quarter of the year, in the midst of the crisis. As China regained control of the situation, however, the music changed again.

Reading the environment is a complicated process. What do we make, for example, of the fact that “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” has vanished from Li Zhanshu’s report this year?

No doubt a priority for Wang Yi in particular, “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” is missing from section five of Li Zhanshu’s report, though there is the usual talk of policy concepts subsumed by this “thought” – including the “community of common destiny for mankind” (人类命运共同体), the Belt and Road Initiative (一带一路), multilateral dialogue and so on.

Interestingly, section five does make prominent mention of “Xi Jinping Thought on Rule of Law,” perhaps because this phrase is closely aligned with the legislative work of the NPC on a range of issues that have prompted international controversy, not least the question of Hong Kong and national security. The section addresses the need to “promote the China path and the Chinese system oversea.” This is about counteracting international criticism of China’s actions, and Li suggests the NPC Standing Committee has performed well:

[We] actively promoted Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for the New Era, actively introducing China’s development achievements and its contributions to the world. [We] actively promoted Xi Jinping Thought on Rule of Law, introducing the people’s congress system and its legislative work. [We] actively promoted China’s concepts of adhering to people first (人民至上) and life first (生命至上) in its fight against the epidemic, sharing China’s experiences and methods in fighting the epidemic.

How did the NPC achieve this messaging? Here we find an interesting note on the conduct of external propaganda, not touched upon in last year’s report. Li notes: “[We] strengthened the building of the English-language website of the NPC, and prioritized the English-language edition of NPC (中国人大) magazine, demonstrating the advantages and efficacy of the democratic political system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

China’s multifaceted approaches to external propaganda and disinformation, including through international social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, have received a great deal of scrutiny over the past year. But would anyone seriously count NPC magazine among the jewels of foreign influence?

This is an odd boast for the NPC Standing Committee. The kindest thing to be said about the magazine is that it faithfully reflects the vacuous and self-congratulatory myth-making readily found in the Chinese-language Party state media. “Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping,” reads one section header, following a drop quote from the General Secretary that reads: “China has the full confidence and capability to win the battle against the virus with concerted efforts, scientific containment and targeted policies under the strong leadership of the CCP.”

Even deeply ideological language like “the people’s war” (人民战争) is lobbed out into the wide world (assuming the publication has any measurable circulation) in the vain hope that it will find an audience.

But perhaps that is exactly the point. “External” though this propaganda may be, the work of NPC magazine is not directed toward foreign audiences at all. Not really. Like Li Zhanshu’s NPC Standing Committee report, it is a mirror in which all of us can gaze at the CCP’s reflection of itself — resolving gradually into the reflection of just one man.