China’s annual “two sessions” are now, well, in session. And that means it is time again for the Chinese Communist Party to live out another of its timeless obsessions — trying to introduce life and colour into what is otherwise mystifyingly dull.
For years now, China has experimented with newer and more youthful approaches to propaganda. Take, for example, this video posted over the weekend by the official Xinhua News Agency, in which “Xinhua correspondents” Katie Capstick and Roisin Timmins are rallied to produce Xinhua’s best approximation of a BuzzFeed-style approach to the “two sessions” — a series of quiz questions beginning with “What are the two sessions?”
But one of the hands-down favourites this year will certainly be this English-language rap video about the “two sessions” co-produced by Xinhuanet Co. Ltd. and Su Han Studio.
A number of media have reached CMP for comment on this phenomenon (don’t forget the Chinese-language rap at People’s Daily Online last year). Are state media targeting foreign audiences with products like this? Are they likely to be successful?
I’ll share just a few thoughts.
First of all, the rap video is a must-watch for its shamelessness, and for its often bewildering cluelessness. “Cringe with us at China’s parliamentary propaganda rap,” wrote the SCMP’s Inkstone as it introduced the video today. From start to finish, the video remains solidly in the self-parody zone, and one of my personal favourite moments is when the line, “We keep the environment alive,” is juxtaposed with scenes of recreational jet-skiers and parachute surfers. The only thing missing is the shark.

How can we account for such total nonsense?
In my view, what we are witnessing here is not a coordinated or well-considered strategy of external propaganda or attempts at foreign influence. What we are seeing is the inevitable outcome of a propaganda system that is cash-rich and culturally and intellectually bankrupt. Leaders understand, on the one hand, that propaganda products must “modernise” and have broader appeal. They must, as President Xi Jinping himself has said, find audiences wherever those audiences are. “Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles,” he said in a speech during a visit to the People’s Liberation Army Daily in December 2015, “and that is where we find the focal point and end point of propaganda and ideology work.”
On the other hand, this is a political system in which the Party’s own culture dominates in ways that can be all-encompassing, and this is truer today under Xi Jinping than it was even just seven years ago. Despite the image it tries to project — innovation, innovation, innovation — the system is engineered to promote itself, rather than to respond to a fluid culture and society. And in this system, the most important audience is always the Chinese Communist Party.
Even if the stated objective as a matter of policy is to target overseas audiences, this is not what generally happens in practice, because official China is only really interested in its own monologue. Xinhua is not out to please us. It is out, primarily, to please those within the system who foster and finance projects like the “two sessions” rap video — which by my count required 29 people to produce. The resources required are substantial to say the least.
China’s global propaganda campaign can be “audacious,” as scholars Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin wrote recently. But even when they are out in the great wide world, the products that enact that campaign can be astonishingly insular and self-absorbed. This is hardly a recipe for success.

Topping our short list of media stories for the past week, the controversy over missing documents in a contract dispute between the private Kechley Energy and the state-run Xian Institute of Geological and Mineral Exploration — a case driven into the public eye by former television host Cui Yongyuan (崔永元) — took a bizarre turn as the key whistle-blower in the case, supreme court judge Wang Linqing (王林清), confessed on national television to taking the missing documents himself. Chinese commenting online and on social media were understandably skeptical, sensing powerful interests at play. Over the past six years under Xi Jinping, CCTV has developed quite a track record of airing the ostensible “confessions” of detained individuals before they have appeared at trial or had access to legal advice.
Also this week, a local Party-run newspaper is called out and apologises after being caught plagiarising another Party-run newspaper; China’s internet users surpass 800 million; and the official Study Times, a journal under the Central Party School, is upgrade to a central-level Party news unit, bringing the country’s total back to 18 after structural reforms last year reduced the number.
 
THIS WEEK IN CHINA’S MEDIA
February 23 to March 1, 2019
➢ Supreme court judge confesses to removing documents in high-profile contract dispute, internet users skeptical
➢ Yingkou Daily admits to plagiarised article and issues apology
➢ Study Times to be upgraded to a central-level news unit
➢ New report shows total internet users in China topping 800 million
[1] Supreme court judge confesses to removing documents in high-profile contract dispute, internet users skeptical
On February 22, a joint investigation team led by the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (中央政法委) and including the National Supervisory Commission (中央纪委国家监委) and the Supreme People’s Court (最高人民检察院), released the findings of its investigation into files that went missing in the “Kechley Energy” missing files case (凯奇莱案) and the related legal dispute between two resource-extraction companies. According to the investigation results, Wang Linqing (王林清), the supreme court judge who previously blew the whistle on the fact that the documents in question were missing, confessed to the investigative team that he himself had intentionally removed them out of anger, and in order to prevent others from handling the case because he felt the case was an important one and did not want to share credit.
On March 1, Wang also appeared in a televised confession on China Central Television, saying he had taken the case documents home. A report on CCTV said that Wang faces charges of illegally obtaining and leading state secrets. These seemingly contradictory statements from the man who was the original eyewitness in the case were mocked by Chinese online.

The papers, which dealt with a contract dispute between a private energy company called Kechley Energy, and Xian Institute of Geological and Mineral Exploration, a state-run company. The private company won its case in China’s supreme court in 2017, but the ruling was never acted upon. The case, including the missing documents, finally became public in December last year, thanks to posts made to social media by Cui Yongyuan (崔永元), a former television host.
KEY SOURCES:
People’s Daily (人民日报): 中央政法委牵头的联合调查组公布“凯奇莱案”卷宗丢失等问题调查结果
Weibo account “News Headline Express” (新闻头条快报): 王林清，你就是个蠢货！
Sougou Encyclopedia (搜狗百科): 凯奇莱案
[2] Yingkou Daily admits to plagiarised article and issues apology
On February 25, the self-media account “@ZeiCha” (@贼叉) revealed through its Weibo account that Yingkou Daily (营口日报), the official mouthpiece of the Party leadership in Yingkou City in Liaoning province, had published a commentary called “Fully Creating the ‘Yingkou Courtesy’ City Calling Card” (全力打造“营口有礼”城市名片) that blatantly plagiarised an article published in the May 16, 2018, edition of Zhejiang Daily (浙江日报) and bearing the byline of Xu Wenguang (徐文光), the Party secretary of Quzhou City. The post said that the article in Yingkou Daily was 70 percent identical to the Zhejiang Daily article.

On February 25, Yingkou Daily issued an apology for the incident on its official Weibo account, apologising to Zhejiang Daily and pledging to discipline those responsible.
KEY SOURCES:
WeChat public account “Media Observer” (传媒大观察): 那个抄袭文章的《营口日报》道歉了
“@ZeiCha” (@贼叉): 《营口日报》的这位评论员，word整挺好啊。。。
Yingkou Daily (营口日报): 全力打造“营口有礼”城市名片
Weibo account @YingkouDaily (@营口日报): 致歉信
[3] Study Times to be upgraded to a central-level news unit, bringing total back to 18
In March 2018, with the merger of three broadcast networks, China National Radio (中央人民广播电台), China Central Television (中央电视台) and China Radio International (中国国际广播电台), China had its total number of central-level news units (中央媒体单位) — meaning those directly under the leadership of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party — reduced from 18 to 16. In May 2018, the upgrade of the People’s Consultative News (人民政协报) brought the number of central-level news units back up to 17. With the elevation of Study Times, China has returned to a new era of (18 central media).
The media include:
People’s Daily (人民日报)
Xinhua News Agency (新华社)
Voice of China (中央广播电视总台)
Seeking Truth (求是)
People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放军报)
Guangming Daily (光明日报)
Economic Daily (经济日报)
China Daily (中国日报)
Science and Technology Daily (科技日报)
People’s Consultative News (人民政协报)
China Discipline Inspection News (中国纪检监察报)
Study Times (学习时报)
Worker’s Daily (工人日报)
China Youth Daily (中国青年报)
China Women’s News (中国妇女报)
Farmer’s Daily (农民日报)
Legal Daily (法制日报)
China News Service (中新社)
The supervising institution of the Study Times is the Central Party School of the CCP (中共中央党校). The journal was launched in September 1999, the calligraphy on its masthead written by President Jiang Zemin ( 江泽民) and an opening message penned by Hu Jintao (胡锦涛).
KEY SOURCES:
WeChat public account “Media Tea Party” (传媒茶话会): 独家！17家中央新闻单位将添新兵！
Study Times Online (学习时报网)
[4] New report shows total internet users in China topping 800 million
On February 28, the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), an administrative agency under China’s Ministry of Information Industry, released its 43rd China Statistical Report on Internet Development (中国互联网络发展状况统计报告). According to the report, the number of . internet users in China reached 829 million by December 2018, adding more than 56 million internet users in the past year, with total internet penetration reaching 59.6 percent of the population.
KEY SOURCES:
Guangming Daily (光明日报): 第43次《中国互联网络发展状况统计报告》发布 我国网民规模已达8.29亿 互联网普及率近6成

In late January, Introduction to Constitutional Law (宪法学导论), a textbook on China’s Constitution first published in 2004 and now in its third edition, vanished from online bookstores, including Amazon.cn, JD.com and dangdang.com. Offline, the book was apparently pulled from shelves at Xinhua Bookstore, a government-affiliated book chain that is also the country’s largest.
Written by Zhang Qianfan (张千帆), a law professor at Peking University and one of the country’s leading experts on constitutional law, Introduction to Constitutional Law has long been essential and required reading for students of law in China. While the precise reasons for the textbook’s disappearance were not entirely clear, rumors posted across social media suggested the textbook had run afoul of the authorities for “promoting western ideas, and singing praise of western systems” (宣扬西方思想, 鼓吹西方制度).

The book’s sudden change of fate is one of the latest and clearest indications of a deeper ideological shift in China under Xi Jinping (习近平), one that puts Marxism — with “Chinese characteristics,” of course — back in the driving seat, with real and felt implications for all aspects of society, including education.
Whatever the backstory concerning Zhang’s book, the news of its disappearance came amid a nationwide operation targeting college textbooks.
Earlier in January, China’s National Textbook Committee asked schools for scrutiny of all Constitution-related textbooks in use, according to a notice published on January 7 on the website of Jiangxi Provincial Education Bureau. That notice, which had been removed from the internet by February, is still cached here.
And as Zhang’s book vanished, one clear winner emerged in the arena of constitutional law that illustrates what is at stake for legal education in China. Several colleges, including Jiangsu Normal University, demanded teachers use instead a textbook called Constitutional Law (宪法学), published in 2011 as part of the “Marxism Theory Studies and Construction Project” (马克思主义理论研究和建设工程), an initiative launched back in 2004 — the same year Zhang’s book was first published — by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party during the tenure of Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao (胡锦涛). The ostensible goal of the project was the “prosperous development of philosophy and social sciences” (繁荣发展哲学社会科学) in China through the application of Marxism.
The results — for the field of constitutional law at any rate — were not exactly inspiring. A search for Constitutional Law on China’s most popular and trafficked book-rating website, Douban, shows the book earning a lackluster rating of 2.5 out of a possible score of 10, while various editions of Zhang Qianfan’s Introduction to Constitutional Law uniformly receive ratings of between 9.1 to 9.8.
An “Ideological Three Gorges Dam”
The “Marxism Theory Studies and Construction Project” that spawned the poorly-rated alternative to Professor Zhang’s book is perhaps a reminder that the ideological turn we associate with President Xi Jinping was already nascent in the Hu Jintao era. And its fruits — such as they are — were not clearly in evidence until 2012, eight years after the project’s initiation, and right on the eve of Xi Jinping’s rise to power.
Searching the official People’s Daily newspaper, we can find 605 results for the “Marxism Theory Studies and Construction Project” in the 15 years since its introduction. The first article appears in March 2004, mentioning the project in a report to that year’s session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
By the dawn of the Xi era in 2012, the project had published 25 textbooks on philosophy, arts and the humanities. Its first book, “Ideological and Moral Cultivation and Basic Law Education” (思想道德修养与法律基础), was published in 2006  following a one year process of compilation and editing. The People’s Daily reported in late 2006 that 5.3 million college freshmen – almost all first-year students in China – used this new textbook.
It would be a mistake to underestimate the reach and importance of this publishing initiative. Today, most college students graduating sometime in the past eight years have at least used one of its textbooks. And this is meant only as the beginning. The Ministry of Education has been charged with managing the publication of 93 textbooks in total, while a central government office established especially for the project is responsible for a further 41 textbooks. The fields of study and research involved include history, ethnic studies, religious studies, and even more specialised subjects like the history of Chinese classical drama.
Aside from new subject-area books, China is promoting the advancement of whole new areas of study. Marxist theory, for example, which used to be a secondary subject under the social sciences, has been elevated to a first-degree subject, the highest degree possible in China’s higher education system.
In recent years, mention of the “Marxism Theory Studies and Construction Project” in the People’s Daily has decreased, but the project itself continues to be a core part of China’s cultural development planning. It received prominent mention in the “12th National Five Year Plan for Cultural Reform and Development” (国家“十二五”文化改革发展规划纲要) issued in February 2012,  and was also included China’s “Mid and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Plan: 2010-2020” (国家中长期教育改革和发展规划纲要 2010—2020年), in which universities were told to “positively engage” with the project.
The project is also not limited to textbook publishing. It has produced documentaries, and has even supported the creation of an online encyclopaedia, developed by the Xi’an Institute of Political Science, that collects materials on the “theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
The scale of the project’s output is immense. So immense, in fact, that one expert involved in the project, Xin Bensi (邢贲思), referred to it, in a 2015 article published in the Party’s Seeking Truth journal, as an “ideological Three Gorges Dam” (意识形态的三峡工程).
The Changing Constitution of Legal Studies
The Constitutional Law textbook was officially introduced in 2012. The People’s Daily offered its endorsement on February 29 that year by describing the book’s basic, defining character — which in retrospect might help to explain the recent textbook replacement. According to that article, the textbook is “firmly against the blind copying of Western constitutional theories” (坚决反对盲目照抄照搬西方的宪法学理论).
The People’s Daily piece also criticised constitutional definitions offered by Western scholars, saying that they “describe the form but do not touch on the nature and essentials” (从形式上描述而不触及本质).
The new textbook also sought to offer “response and guidance” on the “misunderstanding and erroneous tendency in international and domestic ideas” that held that the Preamble to China’s Constitution — which mentions, for example, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” — was not legal binding. The book sought to address such “wrong views about the Constitution’s Preamble,” establishing the principle that the Constitution is a binding document in full. One of the most compelling arguments against such an understanding has come from Zhang Qianfan, who wrote in the Yanhuang Chunqiu journal in 2013 of the Preamble to China’s Constitution that “we believe that it does not have common ‘legal effect.'”
The 2012 textbook also presents what it calls a “Marxist View of Human Rights” (马克思主义人权观),” a direct response to criticisms of China’s human rights record, which the book refers to as “attacks from international powers on human right issues.”
A basic idea underlying the textbook is the notion of national relativism, that constitutions must accommodate the unique characteristics of their own countries. “Constitutions take different routes in different countries and regions,” Xu Chongde, the chief editor of the textbook, wrote in the People’s Daily in 2013. “[We] cannot copy directly from others.”
This official textbook on China’s Constitution is directed not just at legal students in China, but has become regular and required reading for college students more broadly, with the premise that students should become more adept at refuting frequent criticism from the West on China’s failure to abide in terms of policy, practice and law enforcement by many of the stated rights and principles outlined in the Constitution.
“[We should] establish the noble spirit of our Constitution in all citizens,” said Luo Shugang, deputy director of China’s Central Propaganda Department, in a 2014 meeting reported by the People’s Daily. “[Meanwhile, we must] clearly outline the difference between our Constitution-based governance and Western ‘constitutionalism’.”
Huge Cost, Mixed Reviews
The textbooks created as part of the “Marxism Theory Studies and Construction Project” are part of the fifth generation of textbooks introduced at Chinese universities on “ethics and politics,” which is essentially code for the study of Marxism.
Generally speaking, the renewal of texts and reworking of classes and curriculum requires a huge input in terms of capital and human resources. By the end of 2008, the People’s Daily has reported, colleges in China employed more than 60,000 teachers for courses in “ethics and politics,” and a further 91,808 undergraduate mentors. That means that for every 207 students studying at the undergraduate level in China, there is one mentor in Marxism studies.
Since 2008, more than 10 universities, including Peking University and Renmin University, have established new centers for Marxist theory, and a national forum bringing together related experts has been held every year since. At the university level, human resources have been devoted to Marxism studies on a massive scale. Renmin University alone reported in 2012 that it had 151 teachers involved in the writing and editing of textbooks on Marxism.  
But this massive outlay of resources has yielded only mixed reviews when it comes to quality.
According to state media, students and teachers have nothing but praise to the new textbooks. “[I] never expected the textbook will be so interesting,” said Liu Xiaojun, a first-year college student at China Agriculture University, in an interview with the People’s Daily in 2012 when talking about the book “Ideological and Moral Cultivation and Basic Law Education” (思想道德修养与法律基础), “this is one of the most helpful courses to freshmen like us.”
But the feedback online is less encouraging. The book received a rating of just 3.5 on Douban, where many called it “dogmatic” and “brainwashing.”
Some have panned the textbook as “rubbish.” “It includes nothing [valuable],” an anonymous user on Zhihu, China’s equivalent of Quora, complained of one textbook. “Our teacher had to add extra contents to it, and students had to make extra notes all the time.”
Just this week, the Chinese Communist Party released an ambitious blueprint to modernise the country’s education system by 2035, and state media reported that the plan “demonstrated China’s active participation in global education governance.” But others argue that the advancement of compulsory textbooks designed to place ideology over substance threaten the quality of education in China and its engagement with the world.
In an interview with WeMedia NGOCN, Zhang Qianfan, author of the banned book, disputed the criticism that his book “promotes western ideas.” “China’s existing Constitution borrows heavily from the achievements of world civilization,” he said. “What we are promoting is not some ‘Western civilization’ . . . but rather clauses in our own Constitution.”

This week we have a People’s Daily commentary from a former New Zealand prime minister (who did not actually write it), a social media controversy over freckles that some felt insulted women across China, and a senior editor at a Party-run news website suspended for running fake news about an official appointment.
To add a bit of extra fun, we even have an interesting social media post about two very bizarrely named official offices in China, reviewed by a WeChat public account linked to Beijing Youth Daily, including the ”Suzhou City ‘To Forge Iron One Must Be Hard’ Special Operation Leadership Office.” Just imagine that name card!
THIS WEEK IN CHINA’S MEDIA
February 16-22, 2019
➢ People’s Daily runs article attributed to former prime minister of New Zealand, who then denies writing it
➢ ZARA is accused of insulting Chinese model, state media say it is an unfair label
➢ “Mimeng” has her accounts shut down across several platforms in crackdown on “marketing of anxiety”
➢ Two odd new and unusual official phrases garner attention 
➢ Securities Daily deputy editor-in-chief suspended for writing fake news
[1] People’s Daily runs article attributed to former prime minister of New Zealand, who then denies writing it
On February 18, the English language website of People’s Daily Online, run by the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, ran an article under the byline “Dame Jenny Shipley,” the former prime minister of New Zealand.  The article was headlined “We Need to Learn to Listen to China” (我们需要学会倾听中国), and it spoke in lofty praise of China’s recent economic development. “The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China is one of the greatest ideas we’ve ever heard globally,” the article said at one point. “It is a forward-looking idea, and in my opinion, it has the potential to create the next wave of economic growth.

The article created a firestorm in New Zealand, where Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters sharply criticised Shipley for “selling out New Zealand interests” by speaking for China at a period of heightening tensions between the two countries. But the story took an interesting turn when Dame Jenny denied having written the article for Chinese state media, saying that she had instead accepted an interview in December that had already been published. “It is important for the foreign minister and prime minister and others to understand that I would never think of getting into a public situation like this, at such an important time for New Zealand’s relationship,” she told the New Zealand Herald.
Dame Shipley claimed that the Chinese article attributed to her had in fact been manufactured from an interview she gave the People’s Daily back in December 2018. A Chinese version of the article, clearly attributed to Shipley, had in fact already been published on January 23, almost a month earlier.
In fact, such conduct by state media in China, writing interviews with sources as commentaries written by them, is not at all uncommon.
As the controversy raged in New Zealand, People’s Daily Online apparently added a line to the top of the article that read: “The article is based on the interview by journalist with People’s Daily in December 2018.” But the paper did not issue a former correction for what was clearly a blatant misrepresentation.
Asked about the incident on February 21, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said he was unaware of the situation and advised the reporter to approach the “relevant media” for answers. Reuters subsequently reported that it . had spoken to the People’s Daily, which said the situation was being investigated and refused to comment. 
KEY SOURCES:
BBC Chinese (BBC 中文网): 中国《人民日报》“编写”新西兰前总理署名文章
Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报): 《人民日报》网站刊“新西兰前总理希普利”文章 当事人否认撰文
[2] ZARA is accused of insulting Chinese model, state media say it is an unfair label
After the European fashion brand ZARA released an ad in which a Chinese model is clearly shown with freckles on her cheeks, some Chinese accused the company of smearing Chinese women and insulting Chinese.
“Are you trying to uglify Asians?” one user posted angrily to the Sina Weibo platform.

Unlike the scandal last year involving Dolce & Gabbana, during which remarks made by the designer were labeled as “insulting to China” (辱华) by state media, the official Beijing Daily called the ZARA scandal a misunderstanding and said in an editorial that some people had become too sensitive when it came to questions of Chinese pride: “If we raise accusations of insulting China at every turn, we come off as petulant and this is counterproductive to our development.  In the case of this recent storm, if there is a real agitation to boycott this brand, affecting all of its stores in China, this will impact countless employees there, and the baseless damage to society will be substantial.”
KEY SOURCES:
Beijing Business Today (北京商报): ZARA陷丑化中国模特舆论风波
Beijing Daily (北京日报): 不宜动不动扣“辱华”帽子
[3] “Mimeng” has her accounts shut down across several platforms in crackdown on “marketing of anxiety” 
On February 21, “Mimeng” (Ma Ling), a blogger and entrepreneur known for her social commentary and clickbait headlines, had her WeChat public account and its subsidiary account, “Talent Limited Youth” (才华有限青年), shut down by the platform.  The same day, both Jinri Toutiao and Phoenix Online shutdown the “Mimeng” accounts on their platforms, saying that they were resisting “foul culture” (污文化) and “poisonous chicken stock” (毒鸡汤), the latter a term for content that on the surface seems to be wholesome but in fact is fraudulent and misleading.
On February 21, the official Weibo account of Weibo Community Management (新浪微博社区管理) made a post saying that it was conducting an aggressive campaign against what it called “marketing of anxiety” (贩卖焦虑) and other forms of negative and low-end content. Accounts shut down as part of this push, it said, included “@Mimeng” (@咪蒙) and  “@TalentLimitedYouth” (@才华有限青年).
Mimeng’s style of writing, which invites readers to vent their frustrations, has earned her huge commercial success. On January 29, a post on her WeChat public account called “The Death of a Lowborn Top Tester” (一个出身寒门的状元之死), an ostensibly non-fiction story about a gifted young man struck down by misfortune, drew widespread criticism, some charging that it was, though cleverly written, inauthentic and sensational.
KEY SOURCES:
Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报): 别了“毒鸡汤” “咪蒙”微信公众号注销 公众号巅峰时头条广告80万 广告投放频率26.9% 商业价值随之受损
Netease (网易): 咪蒙被关不得转世：被那个5万月薪的实习生毁了
[4] Two odd new and unusual official phrases garner attention 
“Zheng Zhidao” (政知道), a WeChat public account under the banner of the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper, the official publication of the Beijing committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League, made a post on February 20 introducing two quite unusual Party and government organs (党政机构) inspired by equally unusual phrases.
The first was the “Suzhou City ‘To Forge Iron One Must Be Hard’ Special Operation Leadership Office” (苏州市打铁必须自身硬专项行动领导小组办公室). This office was set up almost three years ago, and the supervisory commission of Suzhou’s local office of discipline inspection (苏州市纪委监委) has said that the office’s primary task is to “strengthen honest work (廉政工作) within the discipline inspection team” in order to prevent “[doing] black under the lamplight” (灯下黑). The office, in other words, is discipline inspection for discipline inspectors. The office was set up at the behest of provincial-level discipline inspectors in Jiangsu as a provisional office without independent organisational status, with staff taken from the discipline inspection office. Many district offices in Suzhou have apparently also conducted “special campaigns” under the name “to forge iron one must be hard.”

The phrase “forging iron still requires one’s body to be hard” (打铁还需自身硬) first appeared in the political report to the 18th National Congress of the CCP in November 2012, and in the political report to the 19th National Congress in 2017, this was changed into a new official terminology, or tifa (提法): “to forge iron one must be hard” (打铁必须自身硬). 
The second office introduced by “Zheng Zhidao” was the “Only Run Once Reform Office” (最多跑一次改革办公室).
On February 11, 2019, the official Zhejiang Daily ran a commentary called “There Are No Protagonists in ‘Only Run Once’ Reform” (‘最多跑一次’改革没有局外人) which revealed that the Once Run Once Reform Office is an independent office setup by Zhejiang’s Party Committee in the midst of institutional reforms, and the only new institution to be overseen by two members of the provincial Party standing committee.
KEY SOURCES:
WeChat public account “Zheng Zhidao”  (政知道): 这些党政机构，因名称成为网红！
Zhejiang Daily (浙江日报): “最多跑一次”改革没有局外人
[5] Securities Daily deputy editor-in-chief suspended for writing fake news
After many self-media (自媒体) reported that Yi Huiman  (易会满), a Chinese banker, would possible serve as chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (证监会), the Securities Daily website, operated by the central-level Economic Daily Publishing Group, ran a report on January 25 denying what it said were baseless rumours of Yi’s appointment, and emphasising that “relevant people point out that the self-media are not a land outside the law, and they must face legal responsibility for the transmission of fake news.”
One day later, Yi Huiman was indeed appointed as chairman of the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission, and the Securities Daily came under sharp criticism.
The Securities Daily subsequently issued an internal notice in which it said it had found through an internal probe into the incident that its deputy editor-in-chief, Dong Shaopeng (董少鹏), had written the article without permission and without verification,  and had arranged for the new media centre (新媒体中心) to which he had been assigned to publish it. This failure to carry out proper interviews and go through the established editorial channels for such a major report on personnel assignments had resulted in a “major reporting error.” Because of this, the Securities Daily had decided to suspend Dong Shaopeng and order him to reflect (停职反省), as well as pay a fine of 5,000 RMB.
KEY SOURCES:
WeChat public account “Deep Blue Finance” (深蓝财经): 辟谣“易会满或任证监会主席”出错 ，证券日报副总编被停职罚款
Ce.cn (中国经济网): 易会满履新 8年来四大行董事长“轮流”当证监会主席

In this imagined “New Era” of governance for China, President Xi Jinping has emphasised again and again the need to shore up the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance of all aspects of society. The media, as constructors and communicators of the Party’s “mainstream” ideology, are absolutely core to this mission, and so we have seen not just a consolidation of controls over traditional media but a renewed push to exploit digital technologies in order to ensure the Party is enmeshed with daily life.
In this political environment, in which governance equates with obedience, it has been increasingly challenging to find critical voices, despite the proliferation of the media tools and platforms that would seemingly empower such voices. But the critical voices are there, and they can assert themselves at times in the most surprising of places — a reminder of the complexity of the Chinese context.

One interesting example came yesterday as Chen Dongshen (陈东升), director of the news station for the Legal Daily (法制日报) newspaper in Zhejiang province, wrote a critical post on his WeChat public account about an advertisement appearing in Wenzhou Daily (温州日报), the official Party publication under the oversight of the top leadership in the city of Wenzhou.
The advertisement in question, which appeared across a full page, was taken out by VOC, a private company specialising in smart locks. Against a simple, putty-coloured background were the giant words “Thank You!” They followed a message that read: “We take this full page only with a wish to say the words THANK YOU to the Party Committee and Government of Wenzhou and to the Ouhai District Party Committee and Government!” At the very top of the page was the insignia of the People’s Republic of China. In the upper right-hand corner were the words, “Special Report for the 2019 Two Meetings of [Wenzhou] City,” referring to upcoming local session of the people’s congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
Chen Dongshen had a number of serious objections to the appearance of this advertisement in the official Party newspaper of the city of Wenzhou, and he laid these out in a careful and well-reasoned manner in his post.
In Xi Jinping’s political culture of praise and obedience, how can such expressions of gratitude to the local leadership occasion open criticism?
Before I get into the details of his argument, we should note that Chen’s paper, the Legal Daily, is the official publication of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the body under the Party’s Central Committee that overseas law enforcement, including the police. As such, Chen of course is a journalist within the Party press system, and exactly the sort of “press worker” (新闻工作者) envisioned as carrying out Xi Jinping’s mandate (remember his February 2016 speech on media policy) to “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party” — to be, that is, “surnamed Party.”
The Chinese Communist Party regards the Party-run press in particular as the “vanguard,” as the means by which the “correct” political orientation — the desired attitude toward key issues, breaking news and policies — can be signalled and enforced throughout the broader field of public opinion.
Chen, moreover, is a locally-based journalist for this national-level Party publication, a Zhejiang native, which makes his criticism all the more extraordinary. As one veteran journalist wrote on WeChat, responding to Chen’s post: “This piece written by Chen Dongshen, the director of the Zhejiang news desk of the Legal Daily, is written rationally on the basis of facts. For a central Party media journalist who is a native of Wenzhou to make such a serious and impartial criticism of the Party and government of his hometown in such a way is no easy thing — a friend capable of open admonition!”
Quite a number of media professionals commenting on WeChat have suggested, in fact, that the advertisement appearing in Wenzhou Daily should never have appeared in the first place, given that the newspaper is a Party-run paper, or dangbao (党报). And some have suggested the advertisement showed a glaring lack of political sensitivity, and was an act “without Party spirit” (没有党性).
Here we begin to see just how complicated the simple injunction to obey the Party can become. Xi’s 2016 speech on the role of the media was chockfull of talk about the need to uphold the “Party spirit,” the concept at the heart of the notion of being “surnamed Party.” The injunction to “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party” must apply at the local and regional level as much as at the national level. But how does one balance this all-encompassing, veto-power value with the values the Party and government ostensibly uphold on a practical level? . . . Values, for example, like putting the people first, or serving the development of the private sector, or upholding law-based administration?
As a fundamental, infrangible rule of conduct, obedience undermines the very authority it is meant to protect.
But let’s take a quick look at Chen Dongshen’s objections. His post is titled “Why Is the Full-page Thank You From a Wenzhou Company Ahead of the People’s Congress Strange?” It lays out three primary objections to the advertisement, as follows.
First, he asks, “Where is the need for thanks?” He points out that the local government’s role and responsibility, given that it is supported by taxpayers, which includes businesses, is to make matters convenient and conducive to entrepreneurship and business development.
“Anyone who is in the least bit enlightened about such things,” Chen writes, “knows that the government is product of a ‘social contract’ between the government and the taxpayers, and taxpayers yield a measure of powers so that taxes can be collected and the government supported. The government is then responsible for providing the public with social services and public security.” Chen adds, moreover, that far from expecting gratitude out of hand, the government should expect and accept criticism should it fail in its obligations.
A more sensitive point, which Chen raises rather obliquely, is that acts of illegality and corruption might be suspected if indeed a private company does have reason to “thank” Party and government officials: “If the Ouhai District Government offered any convenience to this company outside of the legal procedures, this of course is another matter entirely,” he writes.

Second, Chen voices his objection to the fact that this advertisement from VOC is appearing as part of “special coverage” for the local Wenzhou people’s congress and consultative conference, important annual political sessions that correspond with the national-level National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), generally referred to as the “two meetings,” or lianghui (两会). These associations, made clear at the top of the advertisement, appear to suggest that this is something more than a simply private sector thank you.
“Why,” Chen asks, “do we hold our local congresses every year?” Citing the Organization Law for the formation of local people’s governments, he says that the primary task of these events is to “discuss and decide major matters concerning politics, economy, education, science, culture, sanitation, environment and resource protection.” According to this law, the author points out, people’s congress delegates are empowered by the law to speak without fear of repercussion. They can submit ideas, opinions and criticism. With 10 signatures or more, they can initiate formal inquiries and petition to remove officials.
So why, again, this sense of gratitude from the private company, particularly in the context of a political session that is meant to underscore the government’s responsibilities and to direct its work? “One thing that the law does not stipulate,” Chen writes, “is that people’s congress delegates or companies should openly express their thanks to the government while congress is in session.”
Private sector businesses must look to their own interests and development, says Chen. Beyond that, they have no obligations to the government. “Any private enterprise can hold itself high and live and develop with dignity so long as it stands on its own, creates wealth, generates employment and pays its taxes. There is no need for it to bend its knee and cup its hands in servile tribute.”
Third, Chen criticises the advertisement in Wenzhou Daily for encouraging the misperception that “Wenzhou’s investment environment has already been perfected, and that there is no need for further advancements,” when the provincial leadership has already stated repeatedly that “reforms are only ever in progress, never complete” (改革只有进行时没有完成时).
But beyond this general question of complacency and self-congratulation, there is the more serious charge of misconduct by local governments. On this count, Chen mentions Ouhai District, whose government and Party committee are thanked in the advertisement, as an example of rampant problems:

In recent days I have received a number of documents regarding complaints brought against the Ouhai District Government, or regarding lawsuits it has lost. For example, the Ouhai Economic Development Commission (瓯海经济开发区管委会) and the district’s Comprehensive Law Enforcement Bureau [this is a body in charge of urban management matters], without having gone through the proper legal procedures, forcibly demolished a factory complex in the name of industrial upgrading, and was taken to court by the company. Wenzhou’s Yongjia County People’s Court, after hearing the case, recently determined that the defendant was in violation of the law.

Chen posts an image of the court verdict in the forced demolition case, which clearly notes that the above-mentioned offices in Ouhai District carried out an illegal demolition of the complex operated by the plaintiff, a private company, on August 2, 2018.

The question that lingers tantalisingly at the end of Chen’s post is whether such acts of servile gratitude should be accepted, while criticisms are discouraged by a culture of loyalty.
Chen brings his point home by turning the situation around, imagining a very different add purchased by the above-mentioned company suffering illegal demolition of its facilities:

“To offer an example, what I mean to say is, if this company wanted to pay money to post an ad in the newspaper that read ‘We take this full page only with a wish to say to the Ouhai District Government: you have acted recklessly!’ — what media would have the guts to run that?”

 
 

On January 25, all seven members of China’s elite Politburo Standing Committee, including President Xi Jinping, gathered at the headquarters of the flagship People’s Daily newspaper to underline the importance of “convergence media” and digital media development as a means of strengthening the Party’s dominance of ideas and information.

Xi Jinping told those present that the Party “must utilise the fruits of the information revolution to promote deep development of convergence media.” The objective was to “build up mainstream public opinion” — meaning, of course, Party-led public opinion — and to “consolidate the shared ideological foundation underpinning the concerted efforts of the entire Party and all the Chinese people.”
As we wrote at the time, Xi’s stilted and jargon-filled speech was essentially about the Party finding new ways to reengineer its dominance over the realm of ideas in the face of dramatic changes to the media environment brought on by the digital revolution. But what exactly does this mean in practice? How can, and how will, the Party leverage digital technology to re-program propaganda in the 21st century?

Already this year we have witnessed one product that provides at least part of the answer, a prime example of how the Party can leverage digital media products to reshape the whole process of ideological control in ways that are far more personal, and far more effective, than anything we have witnessed in the reform era. “On New Year’s Day, many Party members and cadres found to their delight that ‘Xi Study Strong Nation,’ an authoritative and content-rich platform especially for theoretical study, had formally been launched,” the official People’s Daily reported on January 15.
Skirting past this questionable assertion about the delight Party members have derived from this new app, what exactly are we talking about here?

Available at the website xuexi.cn, the “Xi Study Strong Nation” app is tool by means of which, once installed, the Party can assert its ideological and intellectual authority over Party members and employees of Party-run institutions, including schools and media. Beyond making Party messages passively available, as Party newspapers and state controlled media have done for decades, the app commands engagement, by which users can earn “Xi Study Points” (学习积分). Once engagement with the app is enforced by administrative demands that it be installed and used, something that is already happening, the messages of the Party become inescapable.

Gone are the days when you can simply ignore that stack of Party newspapers in the corner of the office, or switch off the Party’s nightly newcast, “Xinwen Lianbo.”

The app’s name, “Xi Study Strong Nation,” or Xue Xi Qiang Guo (学习强国), is derived from a now widely used official pun on the surname of China’s top leader. The surname “Xi” is also the second character in the Chinese word xuexi (学习), meaning “to study.” The app, designed and built by the Propaganda and Public Opinion Research Center of the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP (中共中央宣传部宣传舆情研究中心), an office previously known as the “Research Center on Ideology and Political Work” (思想政治工作研究所), is organised into several sections. These include, to name just a few, “Important News” (要闻), “New Thought” (新思想) and “Summary of Current Politics” (时政综合), all aggregating the speeches and statements of Xi Jinping, as well as audio and video content.

The platform has been designed with a built-in “Xi Study Points” system (学习积分系统) that allows users to accumulate points on the basis of habitual use of the platform, from reading and viewing of content to the posting of comments and other forms of engagement. It has been widely promoted by local governments and ministries and departments across China, and there have also been reports that some work units have ordered employees to attain specified point levels, with disciplinary measures to be imposed for those who fail to comply.

Here is one post to the official WeChat account of the district of Songhan (松山), in the Inner Mongolian city of Chifeng (赤峰), that reports on a “work training” for 170 Party and government employees on the “Xi Study Strong Nation” app.