Author: David Bandurski

Now Executive Director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David originally joined the project in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).

A New Era of Struggle

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in China Newspeak.

Earlier this month, we wrote about the re-ascendence of the pre-reform language of “struggle,” or douzheng (斗争), within the Chinese Communist Party since the start of the Xi Jinping era. Yes, Xi Jinping’s September 3 address to a training session for young leaders at the Central Party School was extraordinary for the density of its use of the phrase “struggle” to talk about the internal and external challenges facing China, and particularly the Party. But it was not an outlier.


The language of struggle has surged throughout the Xi Jinping era, a likely sign of internal tensions within the Party as well as a broader ideological tightening under a leader who sees himself as cast in the revolutionary mold of Mao Zedong, and has even imitated Mao Zedong’s signature.
Xi’s recent invocations of “struggle” likely have a great deal to do with the clear and present difficulties facing the Chinese Communist Party, including economic weakness and an ongoing trade war with the United States, internal strife over Xi’s drive to consolidate and centralize power around himself, the international backlash against China’s ambitions, and so on.
But struggle is in the Party’s blood, coded in what it likes to call its “red genes” (红色基因), the heritage of revolution and revival it continues to claim as the spiritual base of its legitimacy. In this context, it’s not a surprise that the whole notion of “struggle” has been ritualized as part of the CCP’s commemorations ahead of the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
Back in June this year, as protests in Hong Kong shifted into high gear, a notice jointly released by nine ministries and agencies, including the Central Propaganda Department and the CCP’s Organization Department, announced a new “study and propaganda campaign” (学习宣传活动) to spread the spirit of sacrifice for the goals and good of the Party. The competition, for which the leadership wished to have nominations from the public, was for China’s “Most Beautiful Strugglers” (最美奋斗者).
An online announcement for China’s “Most Beautiful Struggler” campaign to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the PRC.
The push to finalize the nominations continues this month with the approach of the October 1 anniversary. On October 15, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that the campaign continues, “leading people to forever remember the important contributions to the Party and the people of strugglers in various professions and work, to forever remember the hardships of the New China, and the process of arduous struggle.” The goal is to inspire “the whole of society to energetically sing the main melody of praise for the new China and the struggle for a new era.”
This, the “struggle for a new era” (奋斗新时代), has become one of the core buzzwords of Xi Jinping triumphalism ahead of the anniversary.
The nominations for “Most Beautiful Struggler” are now in. According to Xinhua, a process of suggestion by Party and government organs and online yielded a list of 300 nominees, including 278 individuals and 22 groups. Now is the time to make your views known on the selection of candidates. This, after all, is one of those rare moments when “the people” are asked for their (apparently) real input, to help paint the Party’s glorious picture:

In order to fully democracy, and broadly solicit opinions, accepting the supervision of society, we now make public notice of the candidate suggestions, the period of notice being from September 15 to September 20. During this notice period, we welcome people from all corners of society to familiarize themselves with the suggested candidates and to conduct a factual, fair and objective appraisal and inspection of them. If there is any objection to the suggested candidates, please respond by phone, e-mail or letter to the “Most Beautiful Struggler” Study and Propaganda Campaign Committee Office. Phone: (010) 63095197.  E-mail: [email protected].

The candidates, listed here, are probably beyond red repute. But perhaps you are welcome to try. Just remember, China now has a law protecting the reputation of heroes and martyrs. Proceed cautiously.
 
 
 

The Party is Struggling

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in China Newspeak.

In his address to a training session for young leaders at the Central Party School on September 3, Xi Jinping spoke of the immense challenges facing the country and the Chinese Communist Party. The language he chose, however, was not “challenge,” “test” or “obstacle.” He spoke instead of “struggle,” or douzheng (斗争), a word that bears the weight of a painful political history — recalling the internal “struggles against the enemy” that tore Chinese society apart in the 1960s and 1970s.
For many still, douzheng invokes not just the need for unity toward common goals, or a can-do attitude, but warns instead of deep and potentially traumatizing division.

A passage from the Xinhua News Agency release on Xi Jinping’s September 3 speech, with the word “struggle” highlighted.
It is important to take note, therefore, when a senior Chinese leader invokes the language of “struggle” in a contemporary context, understanding that the choice of discourse at the upper levels of the Chinese Communist Party is rarely ever incidental, and never, ever casual.
Certainly, Xi Jinping has never “struggled” so much. The official Xinhua News Agency notice on his speech at the Central Party School made use of the word a staggering 56 times. What on earth does all of this “struggling” mean?
On one level, Xi’s struggles certainly refer to the objective challenges facing China, which would include the ongoing US-China trade war, weak if not faltering economic growth, deeper international resistance to the country’s global ambitions, and persisting tensions over issues of sovereignty, whether in Hong Kong, the South China Sea or Xinjiang. Xi’s speech – or what we can make of it from the official release – is less specific about these challenges, but earlier People’s Daily messaging on “struggles” in the Xi era are more explicit on these points.
On another level, Xi’s constant “struggling” in the September 3 speech means we should entertain more seriously the possibility that Xi is facing his own real struggles within the Party as he grapples with this substantial list of challenges. His choice of language might be intended to send a tough message to those within the Party who resist his leadership, or attempt to work against his objectives. So this talk of “struggle” could point to fierce internal struggles and squabbles within the Chinese Communist Party. Certainly, if we look back on the past half century, we can see that talk of “struggle” at the official level has often served as a warning to those who might act at cross purposes to those in power, or who might mount criticism or opposition.
At the same time, we should recognize that this recent litany of “struggles” is not some Xi era outlier, as though he is suddenly peppering Party discourse with throwback terminology. In fact, Xi Jinping’s entire tenure thus far has been attended by a rather dramatic comeback of the notion of “struggle,” and this has been formalized within the Party discourse. To illustrate this, we looked not at the word “struggle” alone, but at the phrase “great struggle,” or weida douzheng (伟大斗争), which appeared in Xi’s Central Party School speech but has been even rarer in the history of CCP discourse.
As a number of sources have noted in recent days, this recent speech was “Xi Jinping’s first systematic exposition of the notion of ‘great struggle.’” In point of fact, though, Xi Jinping is the ONLY leader in the reform era to ever to have offered a “systematic exposition” of the notion of “great struggle” — and that in itself is significant.
No previous top leader since the arrest and trial against the Gang of Four and the start of the reform and opening policy in 1978-1979 has used the phrase “great struggle” consistently to denote either external challenges or internal divisions, based on our search of the People’s Daily newspaper. But Xi Jinping has done so, and the speech on September 3, though perhaps noteworthy for its dense use of the word “struggle,” was by no means a fresh occurrence.
The following graph shows the number of articles mentioning the phrase “great struggle” in the People’s Daily from 1976, starting from the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, during which the notion of struggle was a constant and painful feature of political life. At that time, the “great struggle” was generally directed against the perceived enemies of Mao Zedong, who were often branded as “rightists,” and against the “imperialism” of the United States.

Most often, the enemies to “struggle” against were those within the Party’s ranks and within society. On October 1, 1976, for example, just weeks after the death of Mao Zedong, and just days before Hua Guofeng ordered the arrest of the Gang of Four, an article on page five of the People’s Daily bore the headline: “A Great Struggle Criticizing Deng [Xiaoping] and Counter-Attacking Rightist Tendencies to Promote Film Development” (批邓、反击右倾翻案风的伟大斗争促进电影事业发展). The article was about the release of new films for National Day, many of which dealt with anti-rightist themes.
By April of the next year, four months before Deng Xiaoping’s rehabilitation at the National Party Congress in 1977, the struggle had turned on the Gang of Four. A headline in the People’s Daily read: “Fully Carrying On the Great Struggle to Expose and Criticize the ‘Gang of Four'” (把揭批“四人帮”的伟大斗争进行到底).
Many more articles referring to a “great struggle” with regard to the Gang of Four made their way into the newspaper through 1979. But after this, as reform and opening got underway, the phrase effectively disappeared for more than three decades. In fact, in the almost 35 years between the last “great struggle” attacks on the Gang of Four and the first appearance of “great struggle” in the Xi Jinping era, just two references to the phrase appear at all in the headlines of articles in the People’s Daily, and on average between 1980 and 2011 the phrase appears in just 7.5 articles in the newspaper each year.
In the graph above, the peak during the Xi Jinping era is unmistakable. In 2011, just 8 articles in the People’s Daily mentioned the term “great struggle,” in keeping with reform period averages. In 2012, we see just a slight increase, with 13 articles including the phrase. But in fact, 12 of these 13 articles date to November and December 2012 and refer directly to the language of Hu Jintao’s political report to the 18th National Congress of the CCP, in which he said that, “Developing socialism with Chinese characteristics is a long-term and arduous historical task, and [we] must prepare to carry out a great struggle with many new historical aspects.”
2012 People’s Daily articles including the phrase “great struggle” almost all appear around the 18th National Congress, referencing the political report by Hu Jintao.
It is no secret that Xi Jinping took the leading role in drafting the political report delivered by Hu Jintao at the 18th National Congress, and this talk of new historical challenges as a “great struggle” is very much in keeping with Xi’s subsequent language about a “new era” and so on. I would argue, then, that we already see the beginning of the Xi Jinping “great struggle” swell in late 2012 during the 18th National Congress.
Through Xi Jinping’s first term, we can see a precipitous rise in use of the phrase “great struggle,” which peaks at 374 articles in the People’s Daily for 2017, thanks in part to the role of the phrase during the 19th National Congress toward the end of that year. During this five-year period, the phrase appears in the context of the anti-corruption drive, as in this article , or this article, both of which talk about the “strict governance of the Party” (从严治党). But the phrase also appears in the midst of warnings about a whole range of perceived risks and threats, both domestic and international — as in this piece written by Meng Jianzhu in February 2017 while he served as head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. Meng writes, echoing the words of the 2012 political report, that “General Secretary Xi Jinping is focused on carrying out a great struggle with many new historical aspects.”
By the 19th National Congress in November 2017, “great struggle” had already become solidified into a new numerical propaganda phrase pushed by Xi Jinping. The so-called “Four Greats” (四个伟大) were about carrying out a 1) “great struggle” (伟大斗争) in order to build 2) “great projects” (伟大工程), promote 3) “great achievements” (伟大事业) and realize the 4) “great dream” (伟大梦想) — the last a reference to Xi’s so-called “Chinese dream” of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”
But the “Four Greats,” led by the notion of “struggle,” were also deeply enmeshed with the governance of the Party itself, the idea being that a “great rejuvenation” could only be achieved if the Party could remain united around the firm core of General Secretary Xi. As Wang Qishan, the powerful and feared outgoing anti-corruption chief (and soon to be vice-chairman) wrote in an article in the People’s Daily on November 7, 2017: “Comprehensive and strict governance of the Party provides a staunch guarantee for historic change. If our Party is to carry out a great struggle, build great projects, promote great achievements and realize the great dream, it must unswervingly adhere to comprehensive and strict governance of the Party.”
The peak created by the 19th National Congress makes it seem that “great struggle” is already in denouement in 2019. But so far this year, the phrase has appeared in 105 articles in the People’s Daily, and those numbers are likely to remain strong, or even rally, in the final four months of the year, with the 70th anniversary of the PRC — not to mention the very real challenges, tests and obstacles facing Xi Jinping, including unhappiness in Hong Kong, and economic and trade woes.
Xi’s talk of “struggle” this week was an important sign, and one to continue watching. This is true, however, not because these remarks are unusual or surprising, but because they have been normalized as part of the fabric of politics in the Xi Jinping era. The Chinese Communist Party is once again the party of struggle, turning on itself as much as on the problems the country faces.

News Control, In the Palm of Your Hand

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

Remember Xi Jinping’s little red app? “Study Xi, Strong Nation” (学习强国) was introduced back in February this year, along with demands that a wide range of Chinese, from government employees to school teachers, devote sufficient time to the study of the theories and policies of the Chinese Communist Party. The app, which scores users on a point system and tracks their progress, represents the gamification of propaganda and political control.
The People’s Daily referred to it simply as “an authoritative and content-rich platform especially for theoretical study.” But the app is intrusive in ways that propaganda has rarely if ever been, essentially bringing the Party and its discipline into the pockets, handbags and homes of tens of millions of people. As we wrote in “The Dawn of the Little Red Phone,” the app can place extraordinary demands on personal time, putting users under significant pressure to maintain point-earning, or fall behind at their own peril — and spawning sideline chatter, of course, about how to beat the system.
Now Xi Jinping’s little red app is putting the control and licensing of news reporters at central Party media right in the palm of, well, the reporters’ own hands.
The Media Oversight Office (传媒监管局) of the Central Propaganda Department announced through a notice on August 23 that online training and testing of news personnel nationwide would now be handled through the “Study Xi, Strong Nation” mobile app, and that testing would take place during the first half of October for the issue of press cards (新闻记者证). The notice has ordered “news units” — meaning in this case central Party media outlets, including top Party-run newspapers, television and radio, as well as 14 central-level news websites authorized to issue press cards — to create and authorize study groups through the app before September 15 in order to prepare staff for study and eventual testing.

Taking Down Deng

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

On August 22, as China marked the 115th birthday of Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who led China into the reform era, flowers were laid at the feet of a bronze statue of Deng in his hometown of Guang’an in Sichuan province. In some media, the birthday was an occasion to revisit Deng’s ideas and writings.
But a discussion soon bloomed across social media that the authorities found unacceptable, and a hasty wave of deletions across WeChat, Weibo and other platforms ensued.


At issue was a post made to “People’s Reading” (人民阅读) and “People’s Daily Press” (人民日报出版社), both official WeChat public accounts operated by the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. That post, called “Deng Xiaoping Abolishes the Lifelong Tenure System for Leaders”  (邓小平废除领导职务终身制), dealt with the now very sensitive issue of term limits for national leaders.
Sensitive why? Because while Deng Xiaoping, still greatly respected as a reformer, had made it a priority to ensure that national leaders did not serve indefinitely and run the risk of over-concentrating power in their hands and sapping vitality from the system, Xi Jinping oversaw the removal of constitutional term limits in March 2018, which some within China regard as a dangerous slide back into the painful past.
It was Deng who led China into the period of reform following the end of the Cultural Revolution, and a crucial aspect of the country’s transformation was a reassessment of the decades under Mao Zedong, during which Mao’s unbridled power had been a fundamental contributor to political, social and economic chaos. Limits on terms for national leaders ultimately came in the 1982 Constitution, which stipulated “no more than two consecutive terms” (连续任职不得超过两届) for key positions, including the national chairman (国家主席), often referred to misleadingly as the “president,” the deputy chairman, and the premier.
These constitutional changes followed the June 1981 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China,” which included a rather frank (by the Party’s own standards) official assessment of the tragedies of the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution. Noting that the failure to “institutionalize and legalize inner-Party democracy and democracy in the political and social life of the country,” had led to over-concentration of power and led to “the development of arbitrary individual rule and the personality cult in the Party,” the Resolution pledged to move the country in the direction of greater limitations on individual leadership:

The Party has decided to put an end to the virtually lifelong tenure of leading cadres, change the over-concentration of power and, on the basis of revolutionization, gradually reduce the average age of the leading cadres at all levels and raise their level of education and professional competence, and has initiated this process.

Reform of the political system was a key priority for China in the 1980s, and into the 1990s. The smooth handover of power to from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in November 2002, and again to Xi Jinping in 2012, was regarded as a proof that the system of leadership succession and of collective leadership were being institutionalized, making real the limits on personal power that Deng Xiaoping had envisioned.
But in the less than seven years since Xi Jinping came to power, all of this progress seems to have unravelled. There is chatter enough in the halls to suggest that Xi’s dismantling of term limits in March 2018, through a constitutional amendment that was introduced without sufficient (or any) debate in the wake of the 19th National Congress of the CCP, has angered some with the Party, who are concerned that Xi now has too much power.
And of course, there have been plenty of signs that Xi has a tendency toward self-obsession and self-aggrandizement, that he envisions himself as a leader after the mold of Mao Zedong. For an illuminating, and amusing, look at this aspect of Xi’s personality, please revisit Qian Gang’s analysis of Xi Jinping’s signature.

The official Sichuan News Online reports on a flower-laying ceremony outside a monument to Deng Xiaoping in his hometown of Guang’an, Sichuan province.
The posts made to the “People’s Reading” and “People’s Daily Publishing House” WeChat accounts on August 22, were in fact passages from a book about Deng Xiaoping published by the People’s Daily Publishing House in March 2013.  The book, authored by former journalist Xu Wei (余玮), is called Deng Xiaoping: Ordinary Man.
The first chapter of the book is called “Retiring and Beginning a Normal Life,” and it includes the section shared by the above-mentioned WeChat accounts. While WeChat and other social media posts sharing the chapter under the title “Deng Xiaoping Abolishing the Lifelong Tenure System for Leaders” have been removed from the internet, and related comments are being actively scrubbed, the chapter can still be found online at a site dedicated to the book.

This most recent takedown of Deng Xiaoping, severely restricting discussion online around ideas and policies that are otherwise well-known, and historical accounts that have been printed and distributed by one of the Chinese Communist Party’s own publishing houses, is a further sign of just how far Xi Jinping has gone in pushing China back into the past.

Seeing Through the Violence

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

Today’s commentary appearing on the front page of the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily is one for the history books. This is true on the one hand because it offers one of the strongest and most indignant rebuttals so far on the protests that have rocked Hong Kong since June, and on the other because it is so reminiscent of commentaries we have seen at other important points of political drama in the history of the PRC. [Photo credit: Hong Kong Free Press].


The sentiments are not new. In fact, they are painfully familiar. The protests are cast as predominantly violent and irrational, undoing any legitimate claim to justice, and they have exposed the “cold-blooded hypocrisy” and the moral vacuum of the West and its cries for “freedom,” for “freedom of speech,” and so on. China will not be fooled. It sees clearly the “black hands” behind events in Hong Kong, these “overseas anti-China forces” that wish to foment “color revolution.”
Why painfully familiar? Because here we are plodding toward the tail end of 2019, and yet this sort of rhetoric is still the way China’s leadership chooses to frame complex events like those unfolding in Hong Kong. Drum beats and trumpet blasts and broad-brushing of Western forces, and no attempt at sober assessment of what is actually happening.
This is a Party-state that claims to have benevolent global ambitions, to offer a “China Solution” to issues facing the world – and yet it cannot speak a human language. It cannot admit any subtlety on complex issues. And today, more than 40 years after reform and opening began, it is farther now than it has been at any point in the reform period from having any credible media voice that can stand apart from narrow, nationalistic rhetoric and engage intelligently with the world.
This is a reminder, at the same time, of why Hong Kong voices, messy and inconvenient though they are, have been such a critical window on China. And what if that window closes?
The commentary ends by saying that 1.4 billion Chinese “are united as one barrier.” How do you talk with and engage a barrier?
Our translation of the commentary, attributed to a “commentator from this paper,” follows:
________________________________
What Do We See Through the Violence?
透过暴行我们看到了什么
Commentator from this paper (本报评论员)
August 15, 2019
On the nights of the 13th and the 14th, shockingly violent incidents happened at the Hong Kong International Airport: A portion of the violent radicals taking part in the illegal gathering restrained and abused Fu Guohao, a reporter for the website of the Global Times, and another mainland traveler right out in the open for all to see. We fiercely denounce such displays of violence! We resolutely support the Hong Kong police and judiciary authorities in decisively enforcing the law and bringing the criminals to justice!
In recent days, one instance of violence after another has allowed the world to see the true face of the “peaceful protests” in Hong Kong. Violent attacks, The trashing of the Legislative Council chamber, the surrounding of the Liaison Office, the use of poisonous chemicals and petrol bombs and other dangerous materials to attack police, deliberately smashing private property and destroying public facilities, deliberately defacing public transportation such as subways and airports, harassing and attacking tourists in the airport, even sick people, pregnant women and children . . . . The extreme violent behavior and methods of the protesters has been taken constantly to new levels, fiercely escalating, the level of destructiveness more and more dramatic. But these violent acts trampling on rule of law are glossed over as “peaceful protests.” And on the other side, the Hong Kong police in exercising the law and legitimately preserving order are smeared as a “repressive force.” When true and false are so confused, and black and white turned upside down, how can you not be angry?!
The Hong Kong opposition parties have long had “freedom of speech” and “freedom of expression” on their lips, but the bitter experience of the Global Times Online reporter has shown their true faces: this freedom is only extended to media that share their views, and media that put out different voices unfortunately cannot enjoy this freedom, but if a single word is unacceptable then they are met with violence. Since the storm against the extradition law began, [they have] unreasonably thwarted normal reporting, have “dug into” reporter’s materials online, have beaten journalists with different beliefs, and have even threatened their families . . . .
Extreme opposition parties on the one hand wantonly suppress media with different opinions, creating an atmosphere of “black terror” (黑色恐怖) in the media, and on the other hand advocate breaking the law to seek justice, saying that “only violence can solve the problem,” instigating and bewitching the youth of Hong Kong to take the path of law-breaking and crime, trying with their words to coerce the Hong Kong citizens into their political dispute, worsening tensions in society. In a nutshell, they want to use the name of “freedom of expression” to “oppose China and bring chaos to Hong Kong.”
Not long after the violence at the airport, certain Western politicians and media again came out to on stage. Turning a blind eye to this shocking violence, turning a deaf ear to the victims of physical abuse, they spoke out for the “brave protesters,” reminding us of what it means to be selective. Since the storm against the extradition law began, certain Western politicians and media have opened their eyes wide to the atrocities, applauded the crimes, all the time claiming that the actions of these radical demonstrators “inspired the world,” saying that “their courage should not be ignored.” The world has already seen enough of these performances of theirs and grown accustomed to it. The United States and Britain have experienced large-scale public protests before, and at many points in U.S. history the military and tanks have been deployed to suppress popular demonstrations and riots. In 2011, when there were riots in London, the British government took a strong position, the prime minister [David Cameron] called the riots “completely unacceptable” and said that there was “no legitimate reason” for the violence,” and that “illusory human rights cannot become a roadblock to identifying criminals and trying them.” [NOTE: Cameron spoke of the “twisting and misrepresenting of human rights in a way that has undermined personal responsibility,” but did not refer to “illusory human rights.”] Just listen to these two instances! Faced with the same violence, they show the world what double standards are, and what is cold-blooded hypocrisy.
“O freedom, what crimes are committed in your name!” With things having developed to this point, people should see clearly the true faces of Hong Kong’s extreme protesters and the black hands behind them. This so-called “anti-extradition” is just a name, an excuse, and what they really seek is to oppose China and bring chaos to Hong Kong, to bring about a “color revolution.” But their performances have become the best and most convincing lesson of the opposite. The Chinese people, including our brethren in Hong Kong, are better able to discriminate and remain immune against what these anti-China forces overseas (境外反华势力) are peddling. We warn those black hands hiding behind: The 1.4 billion Chinese are united as one barrier, and they can stop any flood that threatens to destroy our country and our people. Stop dreaming!

Taming Those Migrant Bandits

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

A short video circulated on Twitter yesterday showed what appeared to be a mass deployment of security personnel in Shenzhen. The video was prematurely identified as showing the People’s Liberation Army preparing for possible deployment to deal with protests in Hong Kong, which understandably prompted some alarm.

However, even the most cursory look at the video and the word “Police” emblazoned on every uniform, shield and vehicle should have made it clear that this was a mass exercise organized by Shenzhen’s Public Security Bureau, and had nothing to do with the PLA. 


On Chinese social media platforms today, more information has emerged about what now clearly seems to have been a police training event, with no apparent link to events unfolding in Hong Kong. Numerous posts to “Shenzhen PSB” (深圳公安), the official Weibo account of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau, identify the event, which was apparently ongoing today, as “Shenzhen Showing the Sword” (深圳亮剑), a “stability preservation” (维稳) event preparing for the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China and designed to “strengthen tactics, inspire morale, build courage and train and prepare for fully safeguarding the country’s social and political security.”
OK, but seriously — wasn’t this intended as a warning to Hong Kong? Well, it’s difficult to say how Hong Kong might fit into calculations. Certainly, there has been speculation on Chinese social media too that this was the real intention of the exercise, to make a determined show of potential force and thereby terrorize those unruly protesters across the border. Again, this is all speculation.

The force was indeed formidable. According to numbers from the Shenzhen police, the exercises involved 12,000 police officers, 50 armored trucks, 200 automatic weapons, 1,200 armored motorcycles and 5 helicopters.


But if we take a closer look at the videos and photographs being shared from official accounts, and listen a bit more conscientiously to the shouted slogans and declared victories, the “Shenzhen Showing the Sword” event reveals a great deal more about the shaky underside of mainland security than it does about the situation in Hong Kong.

Who are these fictional rioters? Official posts make clear that 1,500 police faced off against around 2,000 mock demonstrators wearing yellow hardhats and brandishing clubs. But notice the white banner that the rioters are carrying. It reads: “Give back the money we earned with our blood and sweat!” And what are those rioters shouting? You can hear shouts of, “Give our money back!” as they rush to attack the waiting lines of police.

 

These rioters are migrant workers. Whatever the purpose of the exercise, the back story here is not about taming the democratic ambitions of residents in the semi-autonomous international financial center across the border, but about an outbreak of unrest stemming perhaps from a sudden factory closure or another such grievance among China’s vast population of rural migrant workers — the kind of incident that seems ever more probable in a period of deep economic uncertainty, when China is engaged in a protracted trade war with the world’s largest economy.

This wave of law enforcement propaganda, in other words, speaks as much to China’s fragility and vulnerability as it does to the Chinese Communist Party’s determination to hold on tight.

As one veteran Chinese journalist wrote on WeChat, sneering at the cruel prejudice and twisted authoritarian logic of the “stability preservation” exercise: “So if migrant workers demand they be given the ‘money earned with their blood and sweat,’ this means they are bandits? If they petition, this is illegal; if they gather, they are arrested; if they leap to their deaths [in protest] this is theatrics. Well, I suppose the only thing they can do is get fleeced.”

 

Damage and Suffering

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in China Newspeak.

Chinese state media reported last month that foreign ministry spokeswoman Hu Chunying (华春莹), shown above, had said on July 26 concerning affairs in Hong Kong: “I advise those people who want to invite wolves into the house make a good reading of history. Throughout history, those who colluded with external forces to damage the country and cause suffering to the people  —  how many of them ended well?”
In just one short remark, Hua made use of two idioms  —  ”letting wolves into the house” (引狼入室) and “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” (祸国殃民). The meaning of the first one, essentially to invite trouble, is clear enough, and dates back to the Yuan dynasty. The second, however, may be less familiar to younger Chinese, though for people of their grandparent’s generation, who grew up in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, it is only too familiar  —  even if has been a long time since they last heard it.
We decided to accept Hua’s challenge and look back into the history of this phrase, because in fact the way Ms. Hua was using it seemed a bit different from what we knew, and it wasn’t altogether clear she was in fact using it properly.
In the Republican Era, in fact, both the governing Kuomintang Party and opposition political parties used the phrase “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” (祸国殃民) to launch attacks on one another. In 1917, the provisional government of Sun Yat-sen (孙中山) used the phrase to attack the Beiyang Government. And during the Anti-Japanese War, the phrase was used by the Nationalist government, by the Chinese Communist Party and by the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, the puppet state in Japanese-occupied territory.
Here is an article in China Monthly from 1940, for example. The headline reads: “Rooting Out the Chinese Communist Party that Damages the Country and Causes Suffering to the People” (根绝祸国殃民的共产党).


After victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chen Gongbo (陈公博), the Chinese politician who had been head of the Japan-backed provisional government in Nanjing, was put on trial, and many reports in the media used this phrase to refer to Chen. He in fact had been one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party and a delegate to its First Congress. He underwent numerous shifts in his lifetime, and for a time under the Japanese wielded immense power. He was finally executed in 1946 after being extradited from Japan by American occupation forces after Japan’s surrender.
It was that same year in fact that the People’s Daily was launched. If we look at the occurrence of the phrase “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” in ten-year periods throughout the newspaper’s history, here is what the pattern looks like:

Notice the clear peak in use of the phrase from 1976 to 1986. What was happening during that 10-year period ito cause the phrase to rise so dramatically? I wonder if people my age remember.
During the first three 10-year periods shown above, use of “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” was rather low, at about 11 or 12 articles per year. Generally, the phrase was used to attack the Kuomintang which had fled to Taiwan, and the governments of Western nations. During the same period we can also find “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” in newspapers in Taiwan  — used, as you might guess, to criticize the Chinese Communist Party.
Below is a copy of Taiwan’s United Daily News from October 9, 1952, which uses “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” in the headline：

Between 1958 and 1962, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward became an unmitigated disaster for China, resulting in the death of millions. Here is another page from the United Daily News, this time from October 1, 1963:

The report refers to Mao Zedong as a bandit “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people,” and includes eyewitness accounts provided by Chinese who left the mainland in 1949, and from others who fled through Hong Kong in 1962. The small headline for the article reads: “A Madman’s Experimental Gamble, Creating an Unprecedented Famine.”
Just a few years later, in 1966, the Cultural Revolution unfolded in China, unleashing a new wave of misery. Chiang Ching-kuo, the eldest son of Chiang Kai-shek, who at the time was Taiwan’s Minister of Defense “called on the enslaved youth of the mainland to turn their guns and eliminate Bandit Mao, who has damaged the country and caused suffering to the people.”

When Mao Zedong died in 1976, Taiwan’s newspapers again used the phrase. Mao was the great destroyer, the criminal who had “damaged the country and caused suffering to the people.”

In China, Mao Zedong’s death was the closing of a long period of tragedy. Not even a month after Mao had passed, the “Gang of Four,” which included Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing (江青), was arrested. Anger over the excesses of the left erupted, and a campaign of denunciation of the “Gang of Four” rolled across the country. On October 22, 1976, the People’s Daily published a poem by Xu Gang (徐刚) called “Forward, Mother Country” (祖国，在前进), which rang like a lofty slogan:

Strike down these conspirators who oppose the Party’s power;
Strike down these thieves who damage the country and cause suffering to the people！

It was during the movement against the “Gang of Four” that the phrase “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” reached the peak we see in the graph I shared at the start. In the period from October 1976 to the end of 1977 alone, the phrase was used in 512 articles in the People’s Daily.
The trial against the “Gang of Four” lasted from late 1980 into early 1981, until all members were finally sentenced. Here is the front page from Taiwan’s China Times on January 26, 1981:


One headline on the reads: “Counting the Bloody History of the Cultural Revolution! A Decade That Damaged the Country and Caused Suffering to the People.”
It was at this point that both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, on their respective sides of the Taiwan Straits, actually came together at the level of discourse, both using the same phrase to point to the immense tragedies that had unfolded during the Cultural Revolution, during which, all could agree, disastrous policies had “damaged the country and caused suffering to the people.” The common target of this outrage was the “Gang of Four,” but of course everyone knew that the real culprit was Mao Zedong.
When people of China’s older generation hear the phrase “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people,” this is the history that comes to mind. And this is of course why we see the frequency of the phrase rising dramatically in the 10 years following the Cultural Revolution.
The history of the phrase points to a very clear pattern of use, and it’s no surprise to find basic sources like Baidu Baike (百科) defining the derogatory phrase as being “most often applied to people or groups in power.” In this sense, Ms. Hua’s use of the phrase is actually unorthodox, though she is claiming to teach everyone a history lesson. One could say she is directing her fury at a “group” (集团), I suppose, but she is not directing it at those in power. We should remember, perhaps, that the Kuomintang, which was in power during the Second Sino-Japanese War, repeatedly criticized the Chinese Communist Party as having “damaged the country and caused suffering to the people.”
We should assume that a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has quite a strong team of writers behind her, assisting her with matters of phrasing. And yet, in this case, we must ask ourselves whether her use of the phrase “damaging the country and causing suffering to the people” is actually sufficiently precise  — or whether its use in this context might have been a bit excessive.

War Games in Hong Kong

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

It was a July of frustration and conflict in Hong Kong. But the Hong Kong garrison of the People’s Liberation Army sought to finish out the month yesterday on a militaristic high note, releasing a propaganda video that moves disturbingly from in-the-streets exercises in protest containment — with snipers in position and loudspeaker cries, in Cantonese, of “All consequences are your responsibility!” — to full-on missile strikes at sea.
The video, which has now been posted to YouTube, is being shared through a number of WeChat public accounts in China today, including the account of the website of China Daily, the English-language newspaper published by the State Council Information Office.

The title of the video, invoking a Xi Jinping phrase that has been used with much greater intensity this summer in the run-up to the anniversary of the founding of the PRC, is “Do Not Forget Our Original Aspirations, Defend Hong Kong” (不忘初心、守护香江).
The phrase, “Do not forget our original aspirations,” or buwang chuxin (不忘初心), is a reference to the original goals of the Chinese Communist Party, emphasizing the importance of its ideological stance in favor of so-called “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” It can be seen also as a phrase pleading for the relevance and legitimacy of the CCP as it faces immense headwinds both at home and internationally. For more analysis of the phrase, we recommend Willy Wo-Lap Lam’s analysis posted yesterday at the Jamestown Foundation.
The initial section of the video, marked with the characters “stability preservation,” or weiwen (维稳), in the upper left-hand corner, a reference to China’s domestic policy of suppressing unrest with paramilitary forces, shows scenes of PLA soldiers securing what look like typical Hong Kong streets and alleys, followed by a gaggle of stand-in protesters in what appears to be an exercise fleeing before an intimidating phalanx of soldiers with shields.

The message accompanying the PLA video reads:

Who are we?
The Hong Kong Garrison of the People’s Liberation Army is an important manifestation of national sovereignty; it is an important force in the protection of “one country, two systems”; it is an important foundation in protecting the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong!
What are we doing?
We are focussed on preparing for war, practicing the art of killing the enemy, our bows and swords always at the ready!
The Hong Kong Garrison is a stabilizing force for the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, and we will resolutely implement the directives of the Central Party, the Central Military Commission and Chairman Xi, and resolutely support the government of the SAR and its chief executive, and the forces of patriotism in Hong Kong. We are determined, we have confidence, and we have the capacity to firmly defend our national sovereignty, security, and development interests. We are determined, we have confidence, and we have the capacity to protect the long-term stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.

It goes without saying that this is not at all what the South China Morning Post had in mind with its editorial calling for urgent actions to do something, and ensure something is seen to be done, to de-escalate the situation. The original video is posted below.



Sexism and Propaganda

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

China’s official media were busy this week pushing a hard line on Hong Kong, and stressing the point that demonstrators in the city are troublemakers. Here is a tweet posted today on the official Twitter account of China Daily, the newspaper published by the State Council Information Office. For more on Hong Kong, see our recent analysis.


Also this week, state media reported the death of former premier Li Peng, who has been known outside China as the “Butcher of Beijing” for his decisive role in the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. Media reports about Li referred to June Fourth only as a “counter-revolutionary revolt,” and praised Li’s “important role” in putting an end to the movement. But one paper, Beijing Youth Daily, made a serious error in its layout of the Li story — another case of how press control in China can be taken to absurdities.
Our roundup of the week’s top stories is below, starting with the use the highly sexist term “complaining woman syndrome” in an official commentary on CCTV’s nightly news program attacking “some people” in the United States for being irrational and inhibiting China’s development.
_______________________
This Week in China’s Media
July 20-26, 2019
➢ Official Nightly Newscast Xinwen Lianbo Accuses US of Having “Complaining Woman Syndrome”
➢ Party Media Address the Hong Kong Issue
➢ Beijing Youth Daily Makes Layout Error in Reporting Death of Li Peng
➢ People’s Daily Online Issues First “Internet Content Risk Management Certificates”
[1] Official Nightly Newscast Xinwen Lianbo Accuses US of Having “Complaining Woman Syndrome”
In recent days, the official nightly newscast Xinwen Lianbo (新闻联播) has made liberal use of online neologisms to sharply criticize the United States for ongoing trade tensions that have thwarted China’s development. These terms include “makes people spit out their food” (令人喷饭), which means that something is so ridiculous it invites ridicule; “crazy fits of rage and jealousy” (羡慕嫉妒恨); and the clearly sexist “complaining woman syndrome” (怨妇心态).

During the news program on July 25, anchor Kang Hui (康辉) read out an international commentary called “Who Is Actually Bullying and Scaring Others All Over the World?” (究竟谁在全球到处欺侮恫吓他人?) in which he used the phrase “complaining woman syndrome” to criticize the United States for having “double standards.” The use of this term in an official commentary drew lively discussion online.
On July 26, another international commentary was called “America’s ‘Complaining Woman Syndrome’ is a Stumbling Block for Global Cooperation and Development” (美国的“怨妇心态”是全球合作发展的绊脚石). The commentary said that some people in the US had “crazy fits of rage and jealousy” over China’s economic power. These unspecified people, who the commentary also said had “complaining woman syndrome,” lost their composure when they saw others developing. In an apparent reference to Huawei, the commentary said that using national power to suppress a Chinese enterprise, and preventing other countries from using 5G networks from Chinese companies, “presented a prime example of despicable activity to the entire world.”
KEY SOURCES:
CCTV News (via Sina.com): 美国的“怨妇心态”是全球合作发展的绊脚石
CCTV Weibo account (@央视新闻): 今天的#新闻联播#在“饭点儿”讲了件荒唐事，大家听了可别“喷饭”啊
[2] Party Media Address the Hong Kong Issue
On July 21, the People’s Daily ran a front-page commentary called “Opposing Violence and Treasuring Rule of Law and Order Together” (共同反对暴力 珍惜法治秩序), which addressed the issue of unrest in Hong Kong. The commentary said: “Hong Kong cannot grow chaotic again, this is the mainstream view in Hong Kong, and the common feeling of all who care about the Hong Kong people.” Former Hong Kong chief executive C.Y. Leung (梁振英) posted to facebook: “Like the vast majority of Hong Kong people, I hope that the clause in the Basic Law about the [intervention of the] People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) Hong Kong garrison does not need to be invoked, and I hope Hong Kong police can effectively control the situation. But the precondition is that these destructive forces operating behind the scenes immediately stay their hand.”
A page-one commentary in the People’s Daily the next day took a strong line on the July 21 incident in which protestors — referred to in the commentary as “radical demonstrators” (激进示威者) and “extremists” (激进分子) — massed at the entrance of the Liaison Office of the Central Government in Hong Kong and pelted the building, including the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China, with black paint, eggs and other projectiles. The commentary was firm in its stance that, as the headline itself read, “The Authority of the Central Government Cannot Be Challenged.” It does affirm the “One Country, Two Systems” formula, but it makes clear that protesters have, in the leadership’s view, “impinged on the bottom-line” by directly attacking the authority of the central government. “We firmly support the Hong Kong SAR Government,” the commentary said, “in employing every legal means to ensure the security of offices of the Central Government in Hong Kong, to preserve rule of law in Hong Kong, and to punish these criminals.”
On July 24, Xiakedao (侠客岛), the WeChat public account operated by the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, said in a post that “certain foreign media” in Hong Kong had “instigated violence” (煽动暴力). It said that the New York Times, the BBC, Apple Daily and other media had all implied in news reports following a press briefing by PLA official on July 24 about the release of China’s national defense white paper that the PLA would become involved in the Hong Kong situation.
KEY SOURCES:
People’s Daily (人民日报): 共同反对暴力 珍惜法治秩序
Ta Kung Pao (大公报): 梁振英：国家主权完整必须捍卫
Xinhua News Agency (新华社): 中国政府发表《新时代的中国国防》白皮书
WeChat public account “Global Times” (微信公众号“环球时报”): 国防部发言人一句话回应香港记者提问
WeChat public account “Xiakedao” (侠客岛): 【解局】在香港，这些媒体如此煽动暴力
[3] Beijing Youth Daily Makes Layout Error in Reporting Death of Li Peng
Following the death of former Premier Li Peng (李鹏), the news was reported in media across China using standard Xinhua News Agency releases. The Beijing Youth Daily, a newspaper published by the Beijing chapter of the Chinese Communist Youth League, ran a front-page headline across the top of the page on July 24 that read, “Comrade Li Peng, 91, Passes Away” (李鹏同志逝世, 享年91岁). Below the headline, however, was an unrelated image, taking up about half of the page, of smiling people wearing red clothing and carrying fresh flowers, with a large caption that read, “Returning with Honor” (载誉归来). The photo, as the caption explained, was of Chinese competitors returning from the International Mathematical Olympiad, at which China and the United States were the top-ranked countries.

The pairing of the photograph with the announcement of Li Peng’s death was presumably a careless breach of media discipline on the part of the newspaper. By July 25, this edition of the Beijing Youth Daily was no longer available online.
Coverage of Li Peng’s death from official state media referred to the June 4th, 1989, crackdown on Tiananmen Square as a “counter-revolutionary revolt” (反革命暴乱), and said Li Peng had “played an important role” (发挥了重要作用) in quelling the incident.
KEY SOURCES:
People’s Daily (人民日报): 中共中央 全国人大常委会 国务院 全国政协讣告 李鹏同志逝世
Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报): 7月24日电子报（无法阅览）
[4] People’s Daily Online Issues First “Internet Content Risk Management Certificates”
From July 26-27, People’s Daily Online issued its first batch of “Internet Content Risk Management Certificates” (互联网内容风控师（初级）证书) to certify personnel for online content controls after relevant training sessions for government personnel, public opinion research experts from People’s Daily Online, industry experts and others. Topics covered at the trainings included policy briefings (政策解读), self-media chaos analysis (自媒体乱象), content risk prevention mechanisms (内容风险防控体系) and so on. 74 participants from various new media took part in the training.
KEY SOURCES:
People’s Daily Online (人民网): 人民网发放首批互联网内容风控师证书

AI for Stability in the New Era

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in China Newspeak.

A neologism has been born on China’s internet. A shortened version of the phrase “intelligent governance,” or zhineng guanzhi (智能管治), the buzzword is zhizhi (智治), which we might call in English simply “AI governance” – and it encompasses many of the new approaches we have seen in China to social and political control using surveillance technology and big data. The innovator and originator of this neologism is none other than Chen Yixin (陈一新), director of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party, which oversees law enforcement authorities nationwide.
Chen Yixin has been a prolific originator of Party slogans, not least the “New Era” language introduced by Xi Jinping. In 2018, he created the “Six Grabs,” a new set of buzzwords for the idea that authorities must be much more aggressive in six key areas to set the agenda on policing and other law enforcement matters. And on May 21 this year, Chen introduced the “Five Governances,” or wuzhi (五治), which included “politics” (政治), “rule by law” (法治), “moral governance” (德治), “self-governance” (自治) and “AI governance” (智治). “[We must] lead with strong politics, exercise protections through rule by law, govern morals, [encourage] self-governance and [employ] AI governance.”
The first four of these five governances were largely familiar hot-air concepts. “Rule by law” referred not to legal protections but the instrumentalizing of the law for Party control. “Self-governance” was not about autonomy but about enforcing political discipline, about everyone behaving and falling in line. But the fifth concept, “AI governance,” was a novel and important formulation encompassing the new powers of control being applied by the Party.
At a recent training session for local-level politics and law officials, Chen Yixin said:

We must place the process of AI governance development in an even more important position, elevating it as an important means of control – [we must] promote “AI governance” in city-level social control systems, operational mechanisms, and in the restructuring of intelligent work processes, accelerating the modernization of social governance [control] at the city level.

Chen Yixin expressed the conviction that by relying on current technology, the Party can effectively and efficiently identify risks and warning signs at the local level, applying timely responses for risk management. The work, he said, would focus on “priority districts and places” (重点区域部位), and on “critical industry sectors” (重点行业领域) – essentially a reference to the “gridded community management system” we wrote about at CMP back in December. This process would rely, said Chen, on such key infrastructure as the Sharp Eyes Project (雪亮工程), literally “Dazzling Snow,” which envisions comprehensive digital video surveillance linked to a national network.

A search for “X-ray specs” in Google images reveals the term as a popular meme in Chinese for exposure of the private.
Chen Yixin also referred to “AI governance” and big data as offering microscopes (显微镜), X-ray specs (透视镜) and telescopes (望远镜) for public security, which he said could “promote the scientificization of policies on stability at the city level.” The reference to “X-ray specs” should bring home metaphorically the extent to which the Party hopes it can make all aspects of life and business in China transparent to itself for the sake of control. A search of the Chinese term for “X-ray specs” in Google Images turns up results (at left) that can only suggest the complete nakedness of the citizen in the face of these applied technologies.
This is the new state of affairs and long-term objective in China’s push to achieve precision and efficiency in its not-so-new objective of “stability maintenance,” or weiwen (维稳), the broader policy imperative since the 1990s that encompasses policing, the surveillance of society and protest management.
These innovations, a reminder that that particular word is not always positive or progressive, have been actively developed by the Party since 2013. And now, thanks to Chen Yixin – an old comrade of Xi Jinping’s who served under him when he was secretary of Zhejiang province, and who will very likely join the politburo three years from now – we have the perfect phrase for them.

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