“What people wish for, and what everyone hopes.” It is with this cryptic line that today’s official commentary in the People’s Daily on Hong Kong’s new national security law begins.

人心所向，众望所归
rén xīn suǒ xiàng, zhòng wàng suǒ guī

What does this mean? It means that whatever the people of Hong Kong may feel today about this dispiriting turn of events, a vague and expansive law that will likely have a chilling effect on the basic rights hitherto enjoyed in the territory, the Chinese Communist Party claims this as a victory for all Chinese, including “our brethren in Hong Kong.”

The page-three commentary, attributed to “a commentator from this paper,” or benbao pinglunyuan (本报评论员), which marks it as executed by top staff at the paper but representing views at the most senior levels of the Party, suggests that the implementation of the national security law is actually a reflection of the “original intention” of the Basic Law (香港基本法的初心), which was to “protect national unity and territorial integrity, and preserve the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.”

As such, the new law is the most appropriate celebration of this year’s 30^th anniversary of the Basic Law – a return to “original intentions.”

“Not forgetting [our] original intentions,” or buwang chuxin (不忘初心), is of course a typical Xi Jinping catchphrase referring to the need for the Chinese Communist Party to remember both its original goals (such as the establishment of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”) and its correct political orientations (meaning the unshakeable rule of the CCP). Just today, the People’s Daily promoted on its front page the publication yesterday in the journal Seeking Truth of a January speech by Xi Jinping on precisely this issue, of “original intentions.”

Seen in this distorted light, the new Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Special Administrative Region is simply a return to normalcy from the “chaos” that has threatened the “one country, two systems” formula. It puts “one country” back into “one country, two systems,” or so the argument goes:

For Hong Kong, only when ‘one country’ is consolidated can the benefits of ‘two systems’ be put into play.

On the question of “two systems,” the commentary again seeks to offer reassurances, that the law does not mark a fundamental change to Hong Kong’s system and values but simply accounts for a few bad apples:

It should be seen that the implementation of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Special Administrative Region targets an extremely small minority of actions and activities that seriously damage national security, [that it] targets the forces of ‘Hong Kong independence,’ ‘Black Violence’ and ‘Burning Together’. The capitalist system in effect in Hong Kong will not change, the high level of autonomy will not change, the legal system will not change.

Those reassurances are difficult to square with the language of the new law. When everything comes out in the wash, how many of the freedoms now enjoyed in Hong Kong – beyond the celebration of its capitalism – will fade or disappear on the grounds that they “seriously damage national security.” The law, for example, specifies as a crime “inciting hatred of the central government.” What does that mean?

Commenting on the law, Czech scholar Martin Hala has rightly observed that the term “national security” is a mistranslation of guojia anquan (国家安全) in the Chinese case. The operative term here might more accurately be translated “state security.” Meaning that the broad purpose of this law is not to ensure the security of the Chinese population or of the “nation,” but rather to safeguard the party-state.

To what extent, then, will this law be used to move against any and all forms of criticism of the party-state in China – in the media, academia, and so on? In the same vein, what does today’s commentary mean when it talks about “anti-China forces sowing chaos in Hong Kong” (反中乱港势力)?

Since Hong Kong’s return, the practice of “one country, two systems” has achieved world-renowned success in Hong Kong. At the same time, it has encountered new situations and problems in the course of its exercise. Particularly in 2019 with the “amendment storm” (修例风波) occurring in Hong Kong, anti-China forces sowing chaos in Hong Kong (反中乱港势力) have blatantly advocated “Hong Kong independence,” “self-determination” and “referendums” and so on, engaging in activities that damage national unity and divide the country; certain foreign and outside forces (外国和境外势力) have blatantly interfered with Hong Kong affairs, bracing and encouraging anti-China forces sowing chaos in Hong Kong, providing protection, and using Hong Kong to engage in activities that harm national security. The people of China, including our brethren in Hong Kong, profoundly recognize that a longstanding “lack of defences” (不设防) on national security have caused Hong Kong to face its most serious situation since its return; the internal and external collusion and convergence of anti-China forces sowing chaos in Hong Kong has already become the greatest enemy to the continuation of “one country, two systems.”

Is it now a crime to be “anti-China” in Hong Kong, however broadly Chinese authorities wish to define this concept? What does that mean?

At the moment, all we have are questions.

[Image of Hong Kong skyline by Fabio Achilli available at Flickr.com under CC license.]

On June 10, the website China Military (chinamil.com.cn), a news portal operated by the People’s Liberation Army, ran an attack piece on the author Fang Fang, whose diary documenting 74 days under quarantine in Wuhan during the coronavirus epidemic was recently published in both English and German editions. Fang Fang’s Diary, in English titled Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City, is an insider’s account of events in the city of Wuhan, the epicenter in January this year of what would eventually become a global pandemic, and it offers details about the crisis and the official response that are highly embarrassing for China’s leaders.

The piece at China Military, “The Lightspeed Publication of “Fang Fang’s Diary” Will Only Expose the Truth About More Western “Pot Throwing, alleges that certain “bad domestic media,” principally Hu Shuli’s Caixin Media, are responsible for pushing Fang Fang’s account and making it a tool for critics of China in the West.

The term “pot throwing,” or shuǎiguō (甩锅), which originated online in China, is roughly equivalent to the English phrase “shifting the blame.” The suggestion in the article is that unspecified “forces” in Europe and North America wish to use accounts like that of Fang Fang to blacken China’s name over the Covid-19 epidemic in order to direct attention away from the worsening situation in their own countries in terms of coronavirus infections and the epidemic response.

The article begins:

On April 8, the English edition of Fang Fang’s Diary that was promoted chiefly by Caixin Online began online sales on Amazon, and the German-language edition followed closely behind. Overnight, the public opinion maelstrom caused by this “diary” based on hearsay grew more and more fierce. The entire process of translation, proofreading and sales of the foreign language edition of this book was completed within just over 10 days. Behind this “rapid publication” are the obvious efforts of anti-China forces attempting to stigmatize the anti-epidemic efforts of the Chinese people.

The key allegations in the article are five-fold. First, that Fang Fang’s Diary is hateful toward China and therefore an “anti-Chinese” work. Second, that Fang Fang’s Diary was “promoted chiefly” by Caixin Online, suggesting that this widely respected news outlet bears responsibility for the attention given to the work to begin with. Third, that the “lightspeed” effort to translate the book reveals that it is an attempt by “anti-China forces” to call into question the efforts of the Chinese people to fight the epidemic. This third point is really about what is now a key message in much propaganda in party-state media – that the CCP’s response to the epidemic was an unalloyed victory. Fourth, the article disparages and seeks to discredit Fang Fang’s work as third-rate and little more than gossip.

Finally, beyond its attack on Caixin, the article suggests other domestic media were complicit. Here is a translation of the relevant passage in the piece:

Who could have guessed that this third-rate stage script could prompt such fierce attention domestically and overseas, something that is inseparable from the hyping and promotion done by certain bad domestic media. These bad domestic media promoted Fang Fang’s Diary through Weibo and apps, and even intentionally ran partial translations of Fang Fang’s Diary and interviews with the author on foreign websites, and the editor-in-chief even for a while promoted it once every day, fearing that traffic wasn’t yet sufficient, that things weren’t yet sufficiently chaotic.

It is never clear in the article what other domestic media or websites are being referenced by this charge levied at “certain bad domestic media” (国内某些不良媒体). But the reference to the “editor-in-chief” is clearly a shot taken at Caixin Media founder and editor-in-chief Hu Shuli (胡舒立).

Such open attacks on domestic Chinese media are rare. One of the last such attacks occurred in 2008 ahead of the Beijing Olympics and in the midst of unrest in Tibet, as more liberal media in China were attacked in commentaries and online as being unpatriotic for expressing more nuanced views on Tibet. At that time, Chang Ping (长平), a well-known editor at Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily, was roundly criticized for reacting to anger in China over the alleged bias of news outlets like CNN by pointing out the hypocrisy of Chinese state censorship.

Fang Fang’s Diary was first published as a series of blog posts at Caixin Online from January to April, with a total of 61 posts, most coming in February and March when the crisis was at its peak. In one entry translated into English at Caixin Global, Fang Fang cricticizes the suggestion by leaders in official propaganda that the Chinese people should be thankful to the government:

A word that crops up frequently in conversation these days is “gratitude.” High-level officials in Wuhan demand that the people show they’re grateful to the Communist Party and the country. I find this way of thinking very strange. Our government is supposed to be a people’s government; it exists solely to serve the people. Government officials work for us, not the other way around. I don’t understand why our leaders seem to draw exactly the opposite conclusion.

One of the more dubious privileges of the social media era in China is that all users, regardless of position, profession, nationality or geographic location, can experience the maddening process of censorship. Engaging means accepting that chats or posts may disappear in a matter of hours, minutes or days. The CCP’s massive project of engineering public opinion, and thereby securing the regime, is now more personal and more international than ever before.

Just ask the British Embassy Beijing.

Earlier today, the embassy made a Chinese-language post to its verified account on WeChat in which it tackled four assertions about Hong Kong that have been made in Chinese state media, offering factual rebuttals of each. The post was public long enough for users to actively share it on the platform, but by evening it had been removed, yielding a message that the post violated regulations.

Below is our screenshot of the post, made shortly before it disappeared.

The British Embassy post is organized as a series of four responses to specific state media reports and assertions for which links are provided. The first report, dated June 6, is a piece from Beijing Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Beijing city leadership, shared through the Shanghai news site The Paper (澎湃). The article itself responded to a June 3 commentary by Boris Johnson appearing in The Times, in which the prime minister said the UK would not “not walk away” on the Hong Kong issue.

The assertion in the Beijing Daily piece highlighted for rebuttal by the embassy post is that the UK supports Hong Kong Independence. The response: “This is not true. The UK has clearly said that under one country two systems Hong Kong is a part of  China. The UK hopes that this framework can continue, and this is also the crux of peace and prosperity in Hong Kong.”

The next assertion with which the embassy takes issue is that the Sino British Joint Declaration does not have “real significance.” This comes from a June 10 piece published online by the official China News Service, seen below.

The response:

The Sino British Joint Declaration is a legally-binding international treaty registered  with the United Nations, and it has been in effect since June 12,  1985. This international treaty between China and the UK makes clear the high level of  autonomy in Hong Kong, and aside from matters of foreign relations and defense, these rights and freedoms so enjoyed do not change for 50 years. The Declaration states: “The current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the life-style.” This includes “rights and freedoms.” The pledges made by the Chinese side, including those concerning rights and freedoms, independent judicial power and rule of law, are critical to the guarantee of Hong Kong’s prosperity and its way of life.

The exchange comes at a tense time for Hong Kong, and a tense time for bilateral relations between China and the UK. News came yesterday that Beijing has put a draft of the proposed national security law before the standing committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post has reported that language in the draft specifies “collusion with foreign forces” as a crime, adding to fears the legislation could be used to target dissent. The British government has exchanged barbs over the proposed legislation with both the Hong Kong government and Beijing, with Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Dominic Raab saying it “raises the prospect of prosecution in Hong Kong for political crimes, which would undermine existing commitments to protect the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong.”

US President Donald Trump signed legislation earlier this week calling for sanctions against Chinese officials for the country’s repressive treatment of ethnic Uighurs in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, where more than one million (and perhaps as many as three million) are thought to be held in detention camps. The legislation was passed overwhelmingly in the US Congress last month, with a bipartisan vote of 413 to 1 in favour.

While the US has steadily been the subject of official ire in China’s party-run press over the past two years, as tensions have rankled over such issues as trade and Hong Kong, a series of tough-worded commentaries and responses today are the best illustration in recent memory of what apoplectic rage looks like in the pages of the CCP’s usually dry and jargon-filled People’s Daily.

Here is an image of page three of today’s paper, which includes six pieces dealing with Xinjiang covering fully three-quarters of the space.

The central piece is written by “a commentator from this paper,” or benbao pinglunyuan (本报评论员), which clearly identifies it as having been written by top staff at the paper to represent the views at the most senior levels of the Party. The same byline was given, to provide just one example among many, to a July 2019 commentary expressing hard-line views on protests in Hong Kong.

”This so-called bill deliberately vilifies the human rights situation in China’s Xinjiang,” the commentary begins, “maliciously attacking the Chinese government’s policies in governing Xinjiang and flagrantly trampling on international law and the basic norms of international relations, amounting to gross interference in China’s internal affairs. The Chinese government and people express strong indignation and firm opposition to this.”

Next, the commentary rejects the use of the frame of human rights to discuss matters in Xinjiang at all, insisting instead that the core issues are terrorism and separatism.

It must be pointed out that the Xinjiang-related issue is not a question of human rights, ethnicity, or religion as the US has clamored about, but rather is about anti-terrorism and anti-secession. Since the 1990s, the “three forces,” including ethnic separatist forces, religious extremist forces, and violent terrorist forces, have carried out thousands of violent terrorist incidents in Xinjiang, causing significant loss of life and property, and seriously trampling on the rights of the local people.

In quite typical fashion, the commentary sidesteps the very real and well-documented facts and questions about China’s policies in Xinjiang and their human costs, and resorts instead to a list of superficial numbers and percentages, as though reciting these can quantitatively deny accounts of torture and invasive surveillance.

The introduction of the so-called Xinjiang-related bill by the US side completely ignores the facts and overturns right and wrong. But facts speak louder than words. In Xinjiang today, ethnic equality and unity, religious harmony, and stable and peaceful lives are all for the real well-being of people of all ethnic groups. In 2019, Xinjiang received more than 200 million tourism journeys, and the economy grew at a rate of 6.2 percent. In 2020, absolute poverty will be eliminated completely [in the region]. The Uighur population in Xinjiang has grown to 11.65 million, accounting for about 46.8 percent of the total population of the autonomous region. In Xinjiang, there are more than 24,000 Islamic mosques, and there is on average one mosque for every 530 Muslims.

The next rhetorical strategy is to turn the accusations around on the US, alleging deep hypocrisy. “The so-called Xinjiang bill in the US attempts to blacken the reputation of anti-terrorism, anti-secession, and de-extremification measures in Xinjiang, and this is a naked double standard on anti-terrorism and human rights issues,” the commentary says. “As everyone knows, the United States has provoked wars in Islamic countries such as Iraq and Syria in recent years on the grounds of counter-terrorism, resulting in millions of innocent casualties.”

Finally, the piece concludes – with an obligatory note on non-interference, that concept long so central to Chinese foreign policy, and national sovereignty – by turning the focus to a buzzword China habitually uses to neutralize and insulate all concrete questions of human rights: development.

Affairs in Xinjiang are purely China’s internal affairs, and we tolerate no foreign interference. We sternly demand that the US side immediately correct its mistakes and stop using the so-called Xinjiang bill to harm China’s interests and interfere in China’s internal affairs. The Chinese government and people are determined to defend national sovereignty, security, and development interests. The attempts by the US side to use Xinjiang issues to incite disharmony in China’s ethnic relations undermine the prosperity and stability of Xinjiang, and efforts to contain China’s development and growth cannot possibly prevail.

Following this commentary at the center of the page are statements from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from the People’s Government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The latter also uses a permutation of “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, a phrase that has through the decades been routinely used by the CCP to express condemnation in instances of serious international conflict and disagreement, making broad claim over popular sentiment:

This so-called bill wantonly slanders and unjustifiably accuses counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures and the human rights situation in Xinjiang, severely trampling on international law and basic norms of international relations, seriously interfering in China’s internal affairs, and seriously hurting the feelings of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang. In response, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and the cadres and people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang strongly express their condemnation and firm opposition!

Like the piece by “a commentator from this paper,” this commentary from the Xinjiang leadership tries to support its case by turning the accusations back on the United States, with a series of paragraphs beginning with the words, “Looking back at America . . . “ It concludes by dismissing the US bill as “ a piece of waste paper that will be swept onto the garbage heap by the force of justice!”

Also worthy of note is an official commentary from Xinhua News Agency in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. The piece accuses the US once again of “double standards,” and suggests that “the US side” is possessed by “Cold War thinking” and “ideological prejudice.”

People’s Daily Online is also hitting hard on the Xinjiang bill today, with a prominent headline at the top of the homepage announcing the re-broadcast of an official documentary on Xinjiang by state broadcaster CGTN. The documentary is called: “Tianshan Still Standing: Memories of Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang.”

[Featured image of a mosque in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, by Brett Vachon available at Flickr.com under CC license.]

Xi Jinping has emphasized on numerous occasions that the Chinese Communist Party must “tell the China story well.” The notion of the “China story,” which dates back to a high-level internal meeting on propaganda and ideology in August 2013, has come to encapsulate the Party’s conviction that it must redress global imbalances in “discourse power,” or huayuquan (话语权), that favor the West and impact China’s fundamental interests internationally.

In March 2019, Xi spoke of “an historic opportunity for Party-led media” to press China’s agenda more actively in the world. “We must strengthen our capacity, boost morale and persevere in telling the China story,” he said, “creating international discourse power befitting our country’s comprehensive national power.”

The global coronavirus pandemic might have had a catastrophic effect on China’s global image, given its sluggishness in grappling seriously with the crisis during the first half of January, and indications that the facts about Covid-19 were actively suppressed by authorities even earlier. But China has, to all appearances, managed to turn the story around. This is testament not, at least not clearly, to its supposedly robust and enlightened efforts to deal with the epidemic – that IS the official story – so much as to the megaphone volume at which China has pushed the glories of its response as an exemplar for all the world.

Even as Chinese diplomats and state media have railed against what they dismiss as efforts to “politicize” the pandemic by highlighting China’s role in the spread of the disease, they have vociferously politicized the crisis at every turn – portraying aid and even commercial shipments of medical supplies as benevolent gifts, and suggesting a loss of confidence in liberal democracy the West.

In late March, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, spoke of a “global battle of narratives.” Public views, he said, were sure to change as the response to the epidemic evolved in Europe. “But we must be aware there is a geo-political component including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity,’” he warned. “Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.”

China has not just spoken loudly through diplomats and party-state media however. It has sought through concerted pressure on all fronts to quiet voices of dissent globally. In April, within weeks of Borrell’s remarks, it emerged that the Chinese government had exerted pressure on the European Union to soften already quite soft language in a report on the coronavirus pandemic. The original report noted: “China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image. Both overt and covert tactics have been observed.” China actively lobbied to block the document’s release, taking issue with this characterization of its international image campaign, and senior EU officials reportedly asked that the language be softened.

China’s unremitting effort to turn the story on Covid-19 around has reached a new distillation point with the government’s release on June 7 of a white paper called, “China’s Actions to Fight the Covid-19 Epidemic” (抗击新冠肺炎疫情的中国行动). This is essentially the authoritative Bible on how China wishes the coronavirus epidemic to be understood and written into the history books.

Fortunately, there is no need at the moment to delve too deeply into the text of this document of self-praise and self-aggrandizement – the “self” here referring to General Secretary Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. The evolved narrative that the white paper represents was in fact summarized more succinctly – yet still quite grandiloquently – in a commentary published yesterday on page three of the official People’s Daily newspaper.

The commentary is 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 official view. The name, which literally translates “bell tone,” is a shortened version of the phrase “bell tone to warn the world,” or jingshi zhongsheng (警世钟声).

Many elements of the narrative will be familiar already to readers, including the idea that all the Chinese people came together (under the resolute leadership of Xi and the CCP) to defeat Covid-19 in what will go down in history as a great victory for China and the world; and that “China’s experiences and methods” in fighting the epidemic have gifted the international community with a Chinese model of health protection. On this point, the commentary quotes Robert Lawrence Kuhn, identified as the director of the Kuhn Foundation but more widely known as a figure regularly featured in Chinese state media programming as a go-to praise-China voice. The Kuhn quote (though you never know with state media quotes) translates: “In the future, historians will very likely see China’s process in fighting the Covid-19 epidemic as a global model for preventing infectious diseases.”

The commentary is structured around what might be called, drawing inspiration from the CCP fondness for numerical discourse formulas, the “three can-be-seens.” Each of the paragraphs that describes these clearly evident (according to the commentary) lessons to be derived from China’s epidemic response includes at the start the statement that “we can clearly see [_____]”. And each of these paragraphs, tellingly, is bolstered at its tail end with reference either to a foreign study or a foreign voice. This reliance on the foreign voice as authoritative is quite a typical feature of party-state propaganda, and one of its most interesting internal contradictions as it seeks to offset and deny other foreign viewpoints that are dis-favoured.

Another very important feature to note in the “Zhong Sheng” commentary is the way it defines the power of Xi Jinping and the CCP. Included in this distillation of the CCP narrative on Covid-19 is a clear stake to the claim that Xi is responsible for this unambiguous victory, and an elevation of his position as “leader,” or lingxiu (领袖). This, in fact, provides the first and most important of the three “can-be-seens.” The statement begins: “Through the timeline of China’s fight against the epidemic, we can clearly see the enlightened leadership and scientific decision-making of the CCP Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core.” In the Chinese, however, Xi Jinping’s name comes first, and the reference to the Central Committee second.

Those who wish to understand both the tone – China’s Covid-19 response is “a magnificent scroll” – and the substance of the “China story” as it pertains to the global coronavirus pandemic could hardly find a better source. As such, I provide a (nearly) full translation of the “Zhong Sheng” commentary below.

____________

An Arduous Journey, Showing Great Strength (艰辛历程，彰显伟大力量)
Focussing Attention on China’s Actions to Fight the Covid-19 Epidemic (瞩目抗击新冠肺炎疫情的中国行动)
By “Zhong Sheng”（钟声)

People’s Daily
June 9, 2020
Page 3

The difficult struggle against the Covid-19 epidemic in China is now written into history. This is a glorious chapter for the Chinese people in the arduous struggle against epidemic [disease]. This is a magnificent scroll depicting the constant growth of the Chinese people through tribulation, their rise through misfortune. This is a powerful voice of the times speaking of the shared destiny of China and the world.

On June 7, the State Council Information Office issued a white paper running to 37,000 characters in length called, “China’s Actions to Fight the Covid-19 Epidemic” (抗击新冠肺炎疫情的中国行动), which recorded the grand course of the Chinese people’s fight against the Covid-19 epidemic, sharing with the international community China’s experiences and methods in fighting the epidemic, sharing the Chinese concept for the global anti-epidemic [effort] and China’s proposition (中国主张). At this critical moment in the global anti-epidemic effort, this important document transmits the confidence and strength to fight the epidemic through unity and cooperation, and international figures have praised it as “enlightening and inspiring the global anti-epidemic cause” and having “worldwide scientific value.”

The white paper makes a detailed timeline of how China has fought against the epidemic since an unexplained case of pneumonia was detected in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. Point by point, it truly records the facts of 126 important nodes in time in 5 different stages, showing to the world China’s critical decisions in facing the major test of the epidemic, the critical measures it took, and the critical results it obtained. The concentrated and  clear timeline marks the arduous journey taken in China’s fight against the epidemic, and condenses the unforgettable shared memories of 1.4 billion Chinese people. China took just over a month to initially curb the epidemic’s spread, about two months to restrict the number of new cases in local areas to single digits, and three months to get decisive results in the obtain the war of defense in Wuhan, and the war of defense in Hubei. The major strategic results obtained in the battle of epidemic prevention and control  the decisive results of the war and the major strategic results of the epidemic prevention and control powerfully safeguarded the safety of people’s lives and health, and made important contributions to the maintenance of public health security both regionally and across the world. “Just as Robert Lawrence Kuhn, director of the Kuhn Foundation in the United States, has said: “In the future, historians will very likely see China’s process in fighting the Covid-19 epidemic as a global model for preventing infectious diseases.”

Through the timeline of China’s fight against the epidemic, we can clearly see the enlightened leadership and scientific decision-making of the CCP Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core. General Secretary Xi Jinping personally commanded [the effort] and personally directed deployments, taking overall control for decisive decision-making, firmly establishing confidence for the Chinese people in the fight against the epidemic, bringing together strengths and pointing the direction. . . . As Bruce Aylward

, senior advisor to the director-general of the World Health Organization, has emphasized after having personally inspected the path of the coronavirus in China: “Behind every line are the excellent policies and decisions of China’s leaders.”

Through the timeline of China’s fight against the epidemic, we can see that everything the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government does is for the sake of the Chinese people, and all relies upon the feelings of the people and on governing concepts. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized “always putting the safety and health of the people first,” [that] “it is of top priority to do our utmost to save the lives of more patients,” [that] “winning the people’s war for epidemic prevention and control must rely on the people,” [and that] to overcome this epidemic, it is the Chinese people who give us strength and confidence.” The world has witnessed that under the bright light of the idea of putting life before all else, China has committed to the protection of the life and health of the people at all costs, resolutely determined to win the people’s war, [to win] the overall war, and [to win] the war of prevention and control. The Chinese people put a high degree of trust in the leader (领袖), and a high level of confidence in the Party and the government, which have consciously taken on the responsibilities and concerns of the nation. In the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, the Chinese people’s confidence in China’s development in various areas steadily increased, and for the third year in a row China’s overall degree of confidence [among its population] was the highest in the world among major economies in the world, reflecting that the Chinese people, who have suffered through the epidemic, have more support and trust in the CCP Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, and more confidence in the Chinese system.

Through the timeline of China’s fight against the epidemic, we can see China’s role and contribution in the global effort against Covid-19. China, with a law-abiding, open, transparent and responsible attitude, reported the epidemic situation at the earliest moment to the World Health Organization, and to relevant national and regional [offices]. At the earliest moment, it shared the gene sequence of the new coronavirus. At the earliest moment is carried out international cooperation in the effort to control and prevent the epidemic, and without reservation it shared its experiences in fighting and controlling the epidemic with various parties. The irrefutable facts show that China issued clear and definite information with the international community at the beginning of the epidemic; and the ‘scraping of the pot’ by certain countries to push off responsibility with accusations of [China’s] “delays” and “concealment” are outright nonsense. A number of international academic publications including the journals Nature, Science and The Lancet, have continuously for several months assessed anti-epidemic measures in China, finding that China effectively controls the epidemic situation, providing an encouraging example to other countries. The international community generally believes that China has demonstrated the role of a truly responsible major power.

The difficult struggle against the Covid-19 epidemic in China is now written into history. This is a glorious chapter for the Chinese people in the arduous struggle against epidemic [disease]. This is a magnificent scroll depicting the constant growth of the Chinese people through tribulation, their rise through misfortune. This is a powerful voice of the times speaking of the shared destiny of China and the world. The great force running through this arduous journey has been transformed into China’s firm confidence and powerful will to overcome difficult challenges, holding up China’s beautiful hope to treasure together with the world the lives and health of the people of all countries, together to treasure our common human home on earth, and together to build a community of common health for mankind (人类卫生健康共同体).  As the white paper says: “The Covid-19 epidemic has deeply impacted the progress of human development, but the longing of the people to pursue better lives has not changed, and the historical wheel of peaceful development and win-win cooperation continues to roll forward.” The Chinese people will forever remember this period in history, and will constantly draw from it wisdom and strength, working with people of all countries to create a better future for human development.

[Featured image by Gauthier Delecroix available at Flickr.com under CC license.]

A number of international media have reported in recent days that Chinese officials might be deriving some pleasure from the protests unfolding in the United States in the wake of the tragic killing of George Floyd. The Guardian newspaper noted Monday that both officials and state media appeared to “revel in scenes of US unrest, comparing protests there to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.” The New York Times reported yesterday that “[as] protests over police violence engulf hundreds of cities in the United States, China is reveling in the moment.”

It is certainly true that Chinese officials are likely to view protests over police brutality toward black people in America as an opportunity to undermine the legitimacy of US statements on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong — and on human rights more broadly. Observe the cunning Twitter mastery shown by Hua Chunying of China’s foreign ministry on Saturday as she responded with a simple “I can’t breathe,” the rallying cry for police protests, in response to a tweet in which her US counterpart Morgan Ortagus said that “freedom loving people around the world must stand with the rule of law and hold to account the Chinese Communist Party, which has flagrantly broken its promises to the people of Hong Kong.”

Also cited in several accounts of Chinese schadenfreude over the US protests is Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of the Global Times. In one of a number of US-related tweets, Hu equates violence in Hong Kong with the destruction evident on the streets of New York, D.C. and Minneapolis, suggesting the latter must have been incited by Hong Kong “rioters,” who had “infiltrated American states.” Hu Xijin later tweeted with apparent glee: “Mr President, don’t go hide behind the secret service. Go to talk to the demonstrators seriously. Negotiate with them, just like you urged Beijing to talk to Hong Kong rioters.”

French journalist Pierre Haski observed, not incorrectly, for the New York Times: “Beijing could not have hoped for a better gift.” But in the prickly domain of international relations, gifts must be unwrapped carefully. As the comments from Hua Chunying and Hu Xijin make clear, Hong Kong is the issue underlying Chinese criticism surrounding the US protests. And this makes the attention focused on the US both a fortuitous occurrence and an extremely touchy subject for the Chinese Communist Party.

Yes, the US protests can to some extent be exploited as an opportunity by the Chinese leadership. But the leadership must be careful at the same time not to imply the legitimacy of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. It must undermine the idea that the United States stands for the values it purports to stand for – freedom, democracy and human rights – while not quite explicitly advocating those same values.

So, looking beyond the social media barbs of foreign ministry officials and the ever acerbic and often tasteless remarks of Hu Xijin, what are Chinese media saying and reporting about everything happening in the US? In fact, the picture is complicated. Hu Xijin’s Global Times aside – and it should always be regarded as a bit on the side, an antagonistic voice on the periphery of the core – party-state media in China, both central and provincial, have not dealt very loudly with the US protests. This is noticeable especially in the case of newspapers across the country, which have not prominently reported the news, and have tended to avoid images of the protests, especially images depicting more violent acts. Meanwhile, social media platforms, including Weibo and WeChat, which cannot be regarded as state media, have been channels for the sharing of a greater variety of information – including rumour, speculation and commentary. Examples include an interesting on-the-scene report from Phoenix TV correspondent Wang Bingru (王冰汝王冰汝) in Bethesda, Maryland; video of looting at an Apple Store accompanied by foreign media reports citing Apple as warning looters that stolen phones will be tracked; and video of marches in New York City accompanied by the hashtag “#US state governor rejected Trump’s decision to send troops#.” Readers who are interested might consider exploring the Weibo hashtag “American riots” (#美国暴乱#) to get a taste of the information being shared.  

But given the suggestion that state media have reveled in events in the US, perhaps it would be helpful to take a slightly more systematic look at how the news is being handled at these outlets. The major caveat I offer here is that there seems to be a marked difference in the information shared by the news apps and public accounts operated by party-state media and the print and online versions of the same media. This begs tougher-to-answer questions about the new ways information, including propaganda, is being processed and shared through digital platforms. The New York Times notes in its report yesterday, for example, that an image titled “Beneath human rights” (人权之下), depicting a cracked and broken Statue of Liberty standing over the White House, was “published by People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, and circulated widely on social media sites this week.”

It should be stressed that this image was apparently created (it is labelled as such) as being from “People’s Daily New Media,” and bears the Sina Weibo tag “People’s Daily.” While the association with the CCP’s flagship newspaper seems clear enough, however, it is not quite accurate, and crosses wires in terms of the media power dynamics at play, to suggest that the image was “published by” the People’s Daily.

As I will discuss in a moment, the graphic message borne by the manga-style image above is something we would expect not to find approximated in the pages of the actual, official People’s Daily, whose discourse is carefully scripted at the upper levels of power. The image is clearly angled toward social media audiences, not toward CCP officials (the primary People’s Daily readership), and designed to go viral. The whole phenomenon of viral propaganda in the digital era, and the differential use of formal propaganda organs versus “official” news apps and social media accounts, is a giant issue deserving much more research (calling all graduate students). To complicate matters further, we must consider the role of Russian and alt-right sources of information both on Chinese state media channels and social media platforms like WeChat, something I will deal with only briefly.

Let’s move on to the traditional, published People’s Daily. The newspaper yesterday included no coverage of the US protests or related commentary. The front page was dominated instead by coverage of Xi Jinping’s plans for a free trade port in Hainan, and with other official CCP business, and most of the rest of the paper was filled with page after page of statutes passed during the recent NPC.

As I said earlier, Hong Kong is the real underlying issue of the moment for Chinese leaders, even as they consider events in the US. And Hong Kong was dealt with in five separate articles on pages 3 and 4. The page 3 commentary was from “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. This column deals with the actions of “certain American politicians” in threatening sanctions against Hong Kong as a result of the proposed national security legislation, and repeats the leadership’s position:

The national security legislation concerning Hong Kong is purely a matter of China’s internal affairs. China’s advancement of relevant legislation is reasonable and legal, and is in the interests of all Chinese people, including our compatriots in Hong Kong. Obviously, some politicians in the United States do not wish to see the long-term stable development of Hong Kong, and they dig about to fabricate various supposed crimes, and threaten sanctions against Hong Kong.

The commentary urges an end to what it calls the “sanctions addiction” of the United States, but never raises US protests. This omission makes sense when you consider the piece’s conclusion, which turns to the need for closer US-China cooperation: “At a time when the COVID-19 epidemic has brought unprecedented public health and economic development challenges to various countries, China-US cooperation to deal with global hardships is of even more prominent importance. The US side should choose to strengthen cooperation with China in areas such as fighting the epidemic.”

A cluster of four pieces on page 4 dealt with Hong Kong national security legislation and the US response, with talk of “the American side blackening ‘One Country, Two Systems’”, the ill-advised nature of the “so-called sanctions,” criticism of Trump’s Friday announcement on barring entry to the US for graduate level research by Chinese nationals with ties to the military.  

And what about today? The pattern on the front page of the People’s Daily holds, with an exclusive focus on internal Party business, and there is no mention at all of the United States through the rest of the newspaper, not even in the context of Hong Kong.

When we review yesterday’s provincial-level CCP newspapers, we find the pattern holds again. The Beijing Daily, the official organ of the Beijing municipal CCP committee, makes no mention of news in the US, focusing instead on front-page coverage mirroring that of the People’s Daily, about the master plan for the new free trade port in Hainan. The focus in later pages is on promoting local economic growth, fighting poverty, and NPC statutes. There is even coverage of city policies to deal with waste.

Fujian Daily, the official party mouthpiece of the CCP committee of Fujian province, similarly makes no mention whatsoever of the United States today, the focus again on Xi Jinping’s remarks on the proposed free trade port in Hainan.  

Turning to Zhejiang Daily, the official organ of the Zhejiang provincial CCP committee, the Hainan free trade port news and Xi Jinping’s pronouncements are again the top story. The rest is dry official news that I leave you to read at your leisure.

If we turn to city-level papers, the same mind-numbing pattern continues. For example, Changjiang Daily, the official CCP publication in Wuhan, is dominated by the Xi story about Hainan, by the NPC statutes, and by local official news.

What about the commercial spin-offs of these and other CCP newspapers, which tend to be heavier on news coverage over dry official business? Without getting too deeply into the woods here, I found that the vast majority of commercial newspapers also dealt sparingly with the US protests, to put it mildly. For many, they simply did not exist.

One notable exception was The Beijing News, a commercial paper launched in 2003 by Guangming Daily and Guangdong’s Nanfang Daily but brought directly under the Beijing city leadership as a central-level paper in 2011. The paper addressed the US situation yesterday in two articles, one a commentary (page 3) and the other a news report (page 12). The former, “US riots escalate,” was written by Chen Jimin (陈积敏), a young professor in the International Strategy Research Institute of the CCP’s Central Party School.

After a brief rundown of the situation in the US, including demonstrations accompanied by “violent incidents,” and the dispatching of the National Guard in a number of cities, the commentary focuses criticism on American hypocrisy, the clear goal being to undermine US credibility on its own core values:

This incident is without a doubt a tragedy. Moreover, people sigh to find that it has happened in broad daylight in an America that parades about ‘democracy, human rights, freedom and equality.'” However, a basic understanding of American history will reveal such surprise as naive.

The second piece, a full-page in the “World News” section, focusses on “riots” in the US, bearing the headline: “Over 4,100 protesters already arrested in US riots.” The report is mostly a recounting of known facts, drawing on coverage from CNN and the BBC. The report emphasizes remarks from Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian, who said this week that “voices of justice from the African Union and African countries represent the general consensus of the international community and he hoped the United States would face them and bide them carefully.” China, said Zhao, is “willing to work with the African side to firmly oppose all forms of racial discrimination, as well as all hateful language inciting racial discrimination.”

China has of course recently had its own serious problems with African leaders over racist treatment of African nationals in Guangzhou, and also faces questions over its treatment of black Americans in the city.

But here we see, notwithstanding, two thematic threads that seem rather consistent in Chinese state media treatment of the US protests – 1) the US has no credibility to speaks on rights and freedoms; 2) China stands with the rest of the world in upholding shared values.

Other commercial newspapers hardly merit attention on the US protests. We note that Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly, typically one of China’s more interesting and professional publications, has no coverage at all of the US on its website today. Providing comic relief, perhaps, the Qianjiang Evening News, a commercial spin-off of the official Zhejiang Daily, would prefer today to devote the front page to explaining why lobster prices are so low. Nowhere does the paper mention the US or other global news.

When we move on to state media news websites, coverage becomes marginally more interesting. The website of China Central Television yesterday included two reports mentioning the US protests – and here is where the question of Russian and alt-right sourcing enters the picture.

The first article, visible in the image below, reported Russia’s RT rejecting supposed claims by former US national security adviser Susan Rice that Russia could be behind the George Floyd demonstrations. In fact, Rice said during a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer on Sunday: “I would not be surprised to learn that they [the Russians] have fomented some of these extremists on both sides using social media. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they are funding it in some way, shape, or form.” Though Rice never explicitly blamed Russia, but rather focused on general disinformation campaigns exploiting divisions in the US, which are well-documented in other contexts, her comments were widely reported to have done so by conservative news sites and Russia media sites like RT and Sputnik News.

The CCTV.com piece clearly cites RT as its only source, and includes a screenshot of RT coverage with Chinese reading: “American politician ‘shifts the blame’ to Russia, and is ridiculed by Russian media.” The piece was re-run at other online outlets, including QQ.com and Hunan’s Rednet.cn, Jiangxi’s official Jxnews.com.cn, Shaanxi’s CNWest.com, the website of Guangzhou’s Yangcheng Evening News, Sohu.com, Sina.com and many others.

This is not an isolated case of use by official Chinese media of RT and other Russian information apparently emerging from right-wing websites in the West, or similar to content appearing through such channels. On Monday, a number of Chinese websites, including Sina.com, shared an RT story detailing an attack by protesters on a white man identified as a Dallas shopkeeper protecting his neighborhood with a machete. The story originated with Elijah Schaffer, a freelance producer for Blaze TV, the network founded in 2018 by American conservative commentator and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck. Schaffer apparently edited a video clip of the attack to make it seem unprovoked, and later spread the rumor that the victim had died. Police in Dallas subsequently complicated Schaffer’s version of events, and it seems the man in question suffered only minor injuries, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  

Chinese accounts, most attributed to the Global Times website, reported that “RT quoted an eyewitness as saying that the man who was attacked was trying to protect a local shop from being damaged by demonstrators.” This eyewitness was in fact Schaffer, as the RT article makes clear.

Also this week, the official China News Service shared through its news app a story from the RT for which George Floyd’s aunt, Angela Harrelson, was interviewed by the Russian service. These and other instances on other stories suggest a pattern of use of Russian sources such as RT and Sputnik News across the official sites and accounts of party-state media in China, something warranting further investigation.

The next article related to the US protests at CCTV.com yesterday, “Protests against brutal police enforcement continue to spread in the United States,” is a fairly straightforward account of protests in the US, including the announcement of a curfew by Minnesota governor Tim Waltz and declarations of a “state of disaster” by other states, including Texas and Virginia. The report is based entirely on US reports from CNN and the Associated Press. The image accompanying this CCTV.com article shows protesting figures in a blurry night scene, but depicts none of the acts of violence we have seen in coverage inside the United States and elsewhere in the world – no scenes of street fires and burning flags, destroyed squad cars or burned out post office buildings.

Looking at the use of images of the US protests in state media, it seems that more violent images are largely avoided, suggesting perhaps that such images have been discouraged by propaganda authorities. The scope of this study is of course limited, but Hong Kong could again be a factor here, as authorities are mindful of the resonance images of violence clashes between protesters and police could have.

We can note that an article and video posted to CCTV.com later in the day yesterday persisted in the attack on US credibility over human rights issues, while avoiding more violent images of US protests. The source of the video and story in this case was CGTN America, and a recent special report called, “America: A Reality Check.” The Chinese-language version was headlined, “Six big truths exposing human rights chaos inside the US.” The attack was numbingly familiar: “The United States has always boasted of being a human rights defenders in the world, and has put together its annual country-specific human rights reports in which it grabs at facts and listens to hearsay. But is the human rights situation in the United States really as perfect as some politicians suggest?”

Once again, the basic tactics: 1) undermine US credibility on human rights and basic freedoms; 2) emphasize China’s international solidarity and ostensibly shared values.

These same themes played out on the Chinese-language website of the official Xinhua News Agency yesterday as it shared an image of protests in New Zealand. The focus was on the international outcry over the death of George Floyd, with the implicit suggestion of China’s shared outrage. The headline: “New Zealand protests against violent law enforcement by US police.” Consider the contrast to similar coverage by the New Zealand Herald, which emphasized solidarity with protesting Americans: “New Zealand protesters have today joined thousands of Americans demonstrating against the killing of Minneapolis man George Floyd.”

The understated treatment of the US protests in party-state newspapers and on principal websites continues today. People’s Daily Online features no coverage on the homepage today.

The Chinese-language site of the official Xinhua News Agency, meanwhile, includes a single report with the headline: “Protests against violent law enforcement by police continues in many places in the US, Floyd funeral arrangements finalized.” The report, which does not include statements from China’s foreign ministry or other commentary, begins:

Protests against violent law enforcement by police that have spread across the United States entered an eighth day on June 2, and peaceful demonstrations were held in cities in the south and west. At the same time, the memorial service and funeral of George Floyd, the African-American who was killed by police violent law enforcement, will be held later this week to next week. 

In Houston, Texas, tens of thousands of people braved the scorching heat in the city center on the afternoon of June 2 to hold a commemorative parade for Floyd. Before the march, the demonstrators called a brief moment of silence.

Once again, the photos in the news article show peaceful protests, and avoid any display of violence. On Xinhua’s homepage, the story is number eleven, following reports on Xi Jinping’s statements on public health and anti-poverty measures, Carrie Lam’s remarks on national security legislation in Hong Kong, and so on.

Given the nature of coverage by party-state media, I leave it others to determine whether, in their view, China’s officials are openly “reveling” in the scenes emerging from the US. I would suggest cautiously that the picture is far more complicated. There are clear cases of exploitation, notable for example in the case of CGTN America’s segment on “America: A Reality Check” – which targets an overseas audience but can be reflected back to a domestic audience. There are commentaries like that in The Beijing News, attempting to underscore American hypocrisy, which in any case are featured regularly in Chinese state media, whatever is unfolding in the US. But there also seems to be a muting of coverage in official channels, very possibly because propaganda officials are keen to avoid associations with Hong Kong.

As I indicated at the outset, one of the most interesting contrasts can be found between party publications like the People’s Daily and their digital cousins, notably “People’s Daily New Media.” The latter specialize in digital viral propaganda, and generally they seem to be far more provocative – and perhaps effective? – in their manipulation of the themes I mentioned, including the undermining of American credibility on rights and freedoms.

One further example can be found in a post circulating this week from “People’s Daily New Media” called “American double standards are bankrupt!” The post, which made numerous other sites and apps, including China Daily, Netease, iFeng.com and Yangcheng Evening News, used the words of President Trump to undermine US credibility on Hong Kong.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump said this in response to the violent clashes stemming from the death of a black man caused by a white policy officer kneeling on his neck, and [the president] said the army would support the governor of Minnesota, even threatening to use force against the rioters.

“What people find incredible is that some American politicians actually called the violence in Hong Kong ‘beautiful’”, the post continued. “Now, can such words be turned around on American politicians?”

The post was accompanied, like the crumbling manga-style Statue of Liberty, with an image to help make it viral. It depicted an American flag turned on its side, with an image of a police officer, hands in his pockets, and kneeling protesters. The Chinese headline: “American Politicians: Spokesmen for Double Standards.”

The “two meetings” of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) have been shortened in 2020, and correspondingly the government work report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang (李克强) has been cut down, from last year’s more than 20,000 characters to just 10,400 characters. Li’s address on Friday took just one hour to deliver, short by historical standards.

But as the room for verbiage was halved in this government report, what terms and priorities were emphasized?

No decline whatsoever in terms such as “core” signifying Xi Jinping’s power

In the 2020 report, like the 2019 report, we find the so-called “442 formula,” referring to the “Four Consciousnesses” (四个意识), the “Four Confidences” (四个自信) and the “Two Protections” (两个维护), appearing once. The phrase group, which is an important indicator of Xi Jinping’s central role in the CCP leadership, was briefly absent from the texts emerging in February and March from meetings of the Standing Committee of the CCP Politburo, the Communist Party’s highest decision-making body – possibly a sign that drum-beating over Xi’s status was being toned down somewhat in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic. But the “442 Formula” quickly returned, and seeing it in the work report is perhaps a further sign of the return to normal in terms of bullish treatment of Xi and his leadership.

In the 2019 government work report, Xi Jinping’s name appeared 13 times, and Xi’s banner term, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想), appeared four times. It is important to note that even as the text of the work report was chopped in half this year, we had just one less instance of Xi’s name, and one less instance of his banner term. If we look at the use of both in terms of use per 1,000 characters, the rise in volume in the 2020 report is clear.

Nevertheless, despite its very strong appearance in the work report, “Xi Thought” (习思想) has not yet been further elevated by the inclusion of the phrase “raising high” (高举). We do not yet have the phrase, in other words, “raising high the banner of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era,” which would indicate a new climb in status for Xi as paramount leader.

At the tail end of the report, we can clearly see a point where the graduated phrase might easily fit. But the report reads instead: “. . . raising high the banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, with Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era as the guide” (高举中国特色社会主义伟大旗帜，以习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想为指导”).

The following table compares the occurrence of various key terms in the 2019 and 2020 government work reports, as well as the lengths of the reports and relevant sections:

Like the 2019 report, this year’s report does not use a number of the more boastful terms (自嗨语) that can readily be found in the state media to describe China’s strengths and its importance globally. Terms like “China Model” (中国模式), “China Plan” (中国方案), “Chinese knowledge” (中国智慧) and “Chinese template” (中国范本) are not present, nor is the term “great power responsibility” (大国担当), a foreign policy phrase that seems to have appeared more frequently in recent months to describe China’s actions globally in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis.

However, we can spot another phrase, related to the above, that has also played prominently of late in the official media – “political and institutional advantages” (政治和制度优势).

The phrase “national security” (国家安全) appears twice in both the 2019 and the 2020 work reports.

A greater emphasis on “employment”

In the 2019 work report, the now common phrase “Six Stabilities” (六稳) had not yet emerged. However, there was mention at two different points in the 2019 report of “stabilities” outside of this rhetorical formula. These are: stable employment (稳就业), stable finance (稳金融), stable foreign trade (稳外贸), stable foreign investment (稳外资), stable investment (稳投资) and stable expectations (稳预期). The terms “Six Stabilities” and “Six Guarantees” (六保) – 1) employment, 2) basic livelihoods, 3) the market structure, 4) grain and energy security, 5) industry supply chains, and 6) operations at the grassroots – have now become formalized in 2020 as part of the official discourse, and we see each of these appearing 3 times in the government work report this year. Aside from these mentions, there are 39 separate mentions of “employment” (就业) alone, 9 more than last year (again, in a report just half the length). This suggests that within consideration of the whole range of economic issues, maintaining employment is one area that particularly concerns the government.

The grimness of the employment situation and the extreme challenges facing enterprises as they struggle to survive can be glimpsed in other areas of the work report this year, such as the dropping of GDP targets, talk of raising the intensity of efforts to lower taxes and fees (加大减税降费力度), promoting the lowering of operating costs for enterprises (降低企业生产经营成本), and talk of “doing everything possible to stabilize and expand employment”  (千方百计稳定和扩大就业).

Hong Kong, Taiwan and the US-China relationship

When we compare the People’s Daily front-pages in 2019 and 2020 announcing the government work report, we can see obvious similarities. But there is also an obvious point of difference that has to be noted, and this concerns the issue of Hong Kong, which is raised in a subhead: “Hearing the draft of the Civil Code and the draft decision of the National People’s Congress on the establishment and improvement of the legal system and enforcement mechanism of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to safeguard national security.”

Judging from the text of this year’s government work report, within the context of what are relatively brief and simple remarks on the relationships with Hong Kong and Taiwan, and with the United States, there is a much more severe treatment of Hong Kong. No longer do we see, as in the 2019 report and previous reports, language about “offering full support to the SAR governments and chief executives of Hong Kong and Macau in accordance with law.”   

The chart below compares the statements in the 2019 and 2020 government work reports on the question of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

To sum up, this year’s government work report maintains a tone toward the leader (领袖) of vowing loyalty and devotion, while it strikes a more realistic and practical tone on the relative economic difficulties facing the country. On Hong Kong, meanwhile, the tone of the work report suggests a clear change from last year’s “two meetings,” which came after the proposal by the Hong Kong government in February 2019 of the extradition bill, but before the onset of successive months of protests in June 2019. As these issues in the report are deliberated this week, we can expect to see these characteristics play out further.

NOTE: This article used the version of the text of the government work report as presented at the NPC, not subsequent versions appearing online, which may differ slightly.

[Featured image: Protesters gather in Hong Kong in July 2019 to oppose the proposed extradition bill. Image by Studio Incendo, available at Flickr.com under CC license.]