WHAT IS IT about the number 19? Back in 2013, Xi Jinping delivered his first major speech on ideology, in which he spoke in hardline terms about a “public opinion struggle,” on August 19. This year, on February 19, Xi Jinping visited state media before delivering an “important speech” on “news and public opinion work,” in which he said that media “must be surnamed Party” and do the Party’s bidding. On April 19, Xi Jinping let loose on the now central issue of cybersecurity, outlining strengthened internet controls and saying that a “clear and bright online space, ecologically sound, is in the interests of the people.”
Is Xi Jinping obsessed with the number “19”? All three of his “important speeches” on media and information policy have been held on the 19th of the month. The character for “9” is a homonym in Chinese of the word for “long-lasting,” seen above.
The character for “9” in Chinese is a homonym of “long-lasting” (久), and as a result tie-ups, such as contracts (or marriages), are often formalised on the 9th, 19th or 29th of the month — an auspicious sign of sustained harmony.

[ABOVE: Is Xi Jinping obsessed with the number “19”? All three of his “important speeches” on media and information policy have been held on the 19th of the month. The character for “9” is a homonym in Chinese of the word for “long-lasting,” seen above.]
Is it that Xi Jinping pines for an eternal spring of ideological dominance? Does he envision an enduring Eden of the mobile internet, a garden “ruled by law,” where forms and content effloresce but no-one dares touch the forbidden fruit of knowledge?
For now, readers may file these questions away in “Arcana of the Xi Jinping Era.”
But we have another 19 of sorts. Yesterday, June 19, a lengthy article by Tian Jin (田进), deputy director of China’s State Administration of Press and Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), appeared on page five of the People’s Daily as part of a series on the “study and implementation” of Xi Jinping’s February 19 speech on the media.
Tian’s article is of course not a Xi Jinping speech. But it is remarkable for the harder edge it gives to Xi’s already hard language on the media — and it is a very concerning indication of the depth of official resolve in tightening, expanding and re-envisioning information controls.
But first off, who is Tian Jin?
Tian, a native of Shanxi who was educated at Hunan University, has spent the past 15 years within the media control bureaucracy, first joining the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) in 2001. Before that, he spent almost two years in Hong Kong as a senior administrative affairs official at Xinhua News Agency.
The 2015 television period drama “The Empress of China.” Just too much cleavage for SAPPRFT official Tian Jin?
It was Tian who fielded questions from reporters in January 2015 following news that the authorities had pulled the popular television series “Empress of China” to make additional cuts. Later that year, addressing a television market event in Shenzhen, Tian praised the industry for “the resounding main theme [of the Party] in their productions, and more robustly positive energy.”

[ABOVE: The 2015 television period drama “The Empress of China.” Just too much cleavage for SAPPRFT official Tian Jin?]
Tian Jin began his People’s Daily article — “Grasping the Important Position of News and Public Opinion Work” — by describing the significance, in the grandest terms, of Xi Jinping’s February 19 address on media policy. The speech, said Tian, provided “the fundamental standard in doing news and public opinion work at this new historical starting point, and offered powerful ideological weaponry in meeting the challenges on the new front lines of news and public opinion, under the new situation, and in breaking through difficulties.”
In CCP jargon, this is more or less secret code for: Unless we get a handle on the mobile-based internet and any other disruptive information technologies that might be coming down the pipeline, the Party will lose its grip on political power. And President Xi has handed us the general blueprint for total information dominance.
All of this is blandly familiar. But what really makes Tian Jin’s piece special is the way he remorselessly employs retrograde language to explain the Party’s priorities and their historical context:

News and public opinion work is an important task for the Party. Comrade Mao Zedong said that revolution relies on the barrel of the gun and the shaft of the pen, and that the Chinese Communist Party must hold pamphlets in its left hand and bullets in its right before it can defeat the enemy. Prioritising news and public opinion work is a fine tradition of our Party, and an important magic weapon that has brought constant victories in revolution, [national] construction and reform. Under the conditions of a new era, the cause of the Party faces an even more arduous and onerous task.

Such talk of guns and pens, of enemies and magic weapons, is the kind of hardline nostalgia we would expect to see on leftist forums in China. We generally would not expect to see such talk in the People’s Daily. In fact, the phrase “barrel of the gun and shaft of the pen” (枪杆子和笔杆子) has appeared just 17 times in the entire history of the newspaper, going all the way back to July 2, 1946. It has appeared in three articles in the Xi Jinping era, after a dormancy of almost 30 years:
1. Tian Jin’s piece on news and public opinion work — June 19, 2016
2. A profile of Ai Siqi, encouraging officials to be theory-minded and study up on their Marxism — August 13, 2015
3. A look back on Mao Zedong’s writings — February 28, 2013
Before these more recent instances, we have to go back almost 30 years to November 15, 1983, to find the last use of the phrase. In the five and a half years from May 18, 1978, to November 15, 1983, there were four pieces in the People’s Daily mentioning the phrase “barrel of the gun and shaft of the pen” — three of them in the context of roundly criticising the Gang of Four and the internal political strife of the pre-reform period.
1. “These counter-revolutionary activities strongly demonstrate intense collusion between counter-revolutionary gun barrels and pen shafts, banding together as traitors.” — May 18, 1978
2. [Mention on a list of books under investigation in Taiwan of a book called, Gun Barrels and Pen Shafts of the KMT.] — November 26, 1982
3. “Lin Biao understood that to engage in counter-revolutionary activities, he had to rely on the ‘two staves,’ namely the barrel of the gun and the shaft of the pen.” — January 31, 1983
4. “First of all, the reactionary rulers grabbed control of the seals [government power], the handcuffs [police power], the guns [military] and the pens [intellectuals], seeking to snuff out and suppress every spark of the revolution.” — November 15, 1983
When we go back beyond these four mentions in the early reform period, we have ten articles remaining, all of them published during the Cultural Revolution.
The 17 articles in the entire history of the CCP’s official People’s Daily mentioning the phrase “gun barrels and pen shafts.” The vast majority occur during the Cultural Revolution, or are used negatively in the early reform period.

[ABOVE: The 17 articles in the entire history of the CCP’s official People’s Daily mentioning the phrase “gun barrels and pen shafts.” The vast majority occur during the Cultural Revolution, or are used negatively in the early reform period.]
Tian Jin’s extremist language continues in the next section of his article, as he piles on “ideological struggle” — an alternative to “public opinion struggle,” which Xi introduced in August 2013 — and “hostile forces,” that catchall phrase pointing to nefarious internal/external enemies of the Party.

Grasping the overall situation in the ideological struggle (把握意识形态领域斗争全局). Along with the acceleration of social transformation in our country, various tensions have grown more obvious, and ideas in society are diverse, varied and changeable — so that we see more frequent interchange, interaction and confrontation between various trends of thought. Internationally, the contest remains intense among different value systems and institutional models (制度模式), and hostile forces overseas have not relented in the plots of Westernisation and division directed against us, with no fundamental change to the status quo of a strong West and a weak China in terms of international public opinion. News and public opinion are on the frontiers of the ideological struggle, and various hostile forces are vying with us for public opinion positions, vying for people’s hearts (争夺人心), vying for the masses (争夺群众). Newspapers and periodicals, and radio and television networks, are the mainstream media trusted by the Party and the people, and they must maintain an active posture (必须主动作为), having the courage to “drive the demons out of our land” (玉宇澄清万里埃), playing the positive and upright main theme (主旋律) [of the Party], eliminating the negative impact of static and noise (杂音噪音), effectively channeling public opinion in society, and firmly grasping the initiative and leading position in the struggle in the ideological sphere.

Tian Jin (田进), deputy director of China’s State Administration of Press and Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), unpacks Xi Jinping’s February 19, 2016, speech on page 5 of the People’s Daily on June 19, 2016.
Later on in his article, Tian speaks of the need for greater nuance in propaganda, putting out products “in forms the people of various countries will enjoy” in order to “have a positive influence overseas.” But at this point, we have spittle on our collars.
The Party’s goal is to dominate the message, both at home and abroad — and there is no need to beat around the bush. This is a life-and-death struggle for ideological dominance.
The reference to “static and noise” recalls an ideological controversy almost 12 years ago in China, when the Liberation Daily roundly attacked the idea of “public intellectuals.” That was in November 2004, after some of China’s more freewheeling commercial papers took up this sensitive issue in the wake of the August 2004 edition of the UK’s Prospect Magazine. After a snide rejection of the notion of “independent” voices — “Intellectuals are part of the worker’s class, part of the masses, and a group under the leadership of the Party.” — the Liberation Daily fumed:
Concepts like this “public intellectuals” are just static and noise, and cannot influence the main tone of our society’s public opinion. But nor can we take a casual attitude. As we face a diversified situation, it is most crucial to remain clear and firm — for only then can the leading position of Marxism be upheld, and only then can we not lose our bearing amid an abundance of ideas.
The Liberation Daily article was a worrying volley from the fringes, and it drew a great deal of scorn from many in China’s press. Tian Jin’s article is more significant. In this case, we have even denser hardline language employed by a senior media official writing in the People’s Daily — in a series, moreover, formally identified as an unpacking of Xi Jinping’s speech in the interest of putting it into practice.
Let’s go through some of the language further on in Tian’s article.
Under a section headed “adhering to the correct political orientation” (坚定正确政治方向), Tian stresses the principle of the “Party nature” of the media, which is of a piece with Xi Jinping’s insistence that the media be “surnamed Party,” and “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party.”
Adherence to the “Party nature” is at the core also of “strict propaganda discipline” (严格宣传纪律), a familiar media control concept in China essentially encompassing the idea that journalists must behave as the Party wants them to behave. But here, again, Tian’s hackles go up and we glimpse the fresh extremism that marks the Party’s approach to information under Xi Jinping.

We must throughout put propaganda discipline up in front, effectively enhancing firm and willing compliance with propaganda discipline . . . not offering any channel for the transmission of erroneous ideas and static and noise.

How will the Party accomplish this? Despite its grandiosity, Tian Jin’s piece differs from much propaganda claptrap in its relative specificity. We can hear in his language not just fury and determination, but an organised and directed will:

We must adhere to territorial responsibility, responsibility for [one’s] territory, ultimate responsibility for [one’s] territory (守土尽责), carrying out the strengthening of discipline throughout, strengthening channeling and management, strengthening comprehensive and strict checks — quickly discovering, firmly restraining and strictly handling certain programs that hype hot social topics, ridicule national policies (调侃国家政策), spread erroneous views (散布错误观点), advocate extreme ideas (鼓吹极端理念) and deliberately intensify contradictions, and conducting awareness education on classic problems through the entire system.

Tian is talking about amplifying the sense of urgency at every level of the media and propaganda ecosystem, and holding leaders and staff responsible for breaches the occur on their watch.
In other sections, Tian talks about “adhering to correct guidance of public opinion” (坚持正确舆论导向), and about “encouraging unity and stability, [and] emphasising positive news” (团结稳定鼓劲、正面宣传为主).
All of this is familiar. But once again, Tian is emphatic and absolutist in a way that seems remarkable. One of his sections is headed: “Correct guidance that is all-encompassing, without exceptions (正确导向全覆盖、无例外). After which, he writes:

We must connect the adherence to correct guidance to every aspect of our work, implementing it in every element, in every position, in every procedure, through every responsible person, absolutely without leaving any hidden dangers or dead ends (绝不留隐患和死角).

Moreover, we have every indication from Tian that the Party is following through on this absolutist approach to control, and that, in fact, it is just getting started:
In recent years, we have already implemented a series of policy measures in terms of the maintenance of guidance at news interview programs, entertainment programs, talent shows, legal programs, reality shows, etcetera.
Further on, in his section on “innovating management concepts, and unifying measures and standards” (创新管理理念，统一尺度标准):

Lately one focus has been promoting unification of measures and unification of standards for guidance and content management between traditional media and new media. For this, we have built a monitoring system (监看监管制度) for audiovisual programming, promoted the building of a network production and broadcast management system for online dramas (网络剧) and micro-films (微电影), introduced measures to strengthen management of overseas television dramas online, all of which have had a positive impact in regulating order in online audiovisual broadcasting, and in promoting the healthy development of the online broadcasting industry (网络视听业). The next step is the research, development and introduction of management measures for documentaries, animation and variety programmes, truly achieving [a situation in which] wherever new media technologies and businesses develop, management can develop in step, truly achieving not just control but also solid management (管得住而且管得好).

For anyone interested in hardline CCP discourse, Tian Jin’s piece offers an embarrassment of riches. It does not bode well for Chinese media or content of any kind for the foreseeable future, suggesting the Party will continue to tighten restrictions — and to make concerted changes to institutions, regulations and other mechanisms that can further this core objective.
The focus, so clear in Tian’s language, is on the challenges posed by the internet and mobile-based media. Which is why, beyond control and regulation, he stresses the need to “accelerate the building of new mainstream media (新型主流媒体), in the process raising the influence and transmission power of [the Party’s] news and public opinion work.” He talks about “actively developing and utilising differentiated, segmented and directed content across websites, Weibo, WeChat, apps and other communication channels.”
Behind Tian Jin’s language, we can hear the clarion call of Xi Jinping’s ambition — the building of a new and all-encompassing information management system, one that will allow the Party to control public opinion through the unforeseeable future of 21st century media.
The barrel of the gun belongs to the CCP, and so must the shaft of the pen, whatever the promise of new media holds. Or, rather, the Chinese Communist Party understands that to defeat the enemy of uncertainty, it must hold the bullets in its right hand and the smartphones in its left.
 

During a forum following high-profile visits to core state media back in February this year, President Xi Jinping stressed the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance of the media. In terms more explicit than at any time in the past three decades, he said all media “must be surnamed Party,” and must “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party.”
One of the most illuminating lines in Xi Jinping’s speech on “news and public opinion work” dealt with the notion of “supervision by public opinion,” or yulun jiandu (舆论监督)—a term that for many years has been synonymous with the most enterprising journalism that can be found in China’s complex media landscape.
Essentially the idea that the media represent the public (or the “masses”) in monitoring the government with critical reporting, “supervision by public opinion” has generally been poles apart from the notion of “positive news,” the sort of brown-nosing coverage we expect to find in China’s bland Party newspapers. In his speech, however, Xi Jinping subverted the distinction entirely: “Supervision by public opinion and positive propaganda are unified,” he said.
Thirteen unlucky characters: 舆论监督和正面宣传是统一的. But with these Xi Jinping nullified the idea that the media might play a monitoring role with any semblance of initiative or independence. Just as all media, from traditional newspapers to WeChat, are subordinated to the Party’s will according to Xi Jinping’s all-dimensional vision of media control, so is the practice of “supervision by public opinion.”

[ABOVE: In this online cartoon, posted to CNHubei.com, a red government seal checks himself in the mirror to see if he is clean and uncorrupt. In the surface he sees the character for “honest and clean,” reflected from scroll hung on the wall behind him.]
According to the prevailing official view of media supervision in the Xi era, critical reporting has gotten out of hand over the past two decades as a result of social and technological transformations. What the CCP needs now is to re-appropriate supervision — to subject it, in other words, to rigorous Party supervision.
In the Party’s official Red Flag journal last month, communications scholar Xiao Zhitao (肖志涛) writes:

In our country, the media run by the Party and the government have always been the main force in supervision by public opinion. However, in recent years, with the steady emergence and development of new media, and as competition between domestic and international media grows ever more dramatic, certain media have engaged in the one-sided exercise of supervision by public opinion power — and a good number of journalists have fallen into the trap of the West’s so-called “freedom of the press,” the “fourth estate,” the [idea of the journalist as the] “uncrowned king.” This has been extremely damaging to the Party’s news and public opinion work.

Unpacking Xi Jinping’s statement about the unity of supervision and positive propaganda, Xiao Zhitao says media must “have a correct grasp of the timing, intensity and effect of supervision by public opinion.”
Most crucially, though Xiao stresses the importance of “accuracy,” his explication makes it clear that factuality in reporting is subordinate to the larger fact of the Party and its priorities. The Party’s dominant position as the final arbiter of truth leads Xiao along corkscrews of absurd logic: “The facts must be described according to the facts,” he writes. “In other words, with accurate reporting of separate facts, along with a grasp of the whole picture of things in terms of the macro.”
What does this mean, a “grasp of the whole picture of things in terms of the macro”? It means that the Party’s status is the fact to end all facts. Why, otherwise, is there any need to use facts to describe other facts?
But there are points when Xiao borders on directness. Like this one:

At the current stage, what to supervise [through reporting], and how to supervise, must be tested by the Party nature and the people nature of the Party media, and a view to the overall [political] situation.

The notion of “Party nature,” or dangxing (党性), returns us to the basic and inescapable fact of the Party’s dominance of media and public opinion, to the assertion that “being surnamed Party is the fundamental principle of news media work.”
Hasn’t the Party always dominated the media? And hasn’t it always been terribly hostile to criticism? No, not at all.
While Xiao Zhitao imagines encirclement by Western ideas of the media supervision role — “so-called ‘freedom of the press’ — his argument elides the fact that supervision (as at least a semi-independent exercise of criticism) is no more Western than the entire Marxist framework on which the CCP has based its rule. In fact, criticism and “supervision by public opinion” have a long history in China, reaching back to the first decades of the 20th century, and to the beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party.
Well before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party were preoccupied with the question of criticism and regime legitimacy. In July 1945, as the Second Sino-Japanese War was coming to a close, Chinese educator and politician Huang Yanpei traveled to the mountainous CCP stronghold of Yan’an to meet with Mao Zedong.

[ABOVE: Huang Yanpei meets with Mao Zedong in July 1945.]
Sitting down with Mao and several others in one of area’s cave dwellings, Huang remarked the rise and fall of regimes throughout his own lifetime, and expressed concern over the recurring problem in China of the “draining” of administrative capacity over time. All regimes became corrupted, he suggested: “When emperors die, they take their dynasties with them.” How, he wanted to know, did Mao Zedong propose to break this “vicious cycle of history”? Mao’s answer, eventually recorded in Huang’s book, Return From Yan’an, was unrelenting oversight. “We have found a new path,” said Mao. “It is called democracy. As long as the public maintains their oversight of the government, the government will not slacken in its efforts.”
On August 30, 1950, when the People’s Republic of China was still less than a year old, an article on page five of the People’s Daily (“Criticism and Self-Criticism in the Newspaper”), said that newspapers must be used to carry out a “firm struggle” against government officials who tried to suppress criticism of their actions and policies. In such instances, said the paper, “[we] must when necessary organise the collective strength of the readers to carry out mass supervision by public opinion, thereby reaching the goal of criticism.”
This article came just four months after the Party’s Politburo passed its “Chinese Communist Party Decision On Newspapers and Periodicals Carrying Out Criticism and Self-Criticism,” which underscored the role of the media in carrying out criticism of the Party and government in order to combat such trends as “bureaucratism.” One of two editorials accompanying the full text of the “Decision” in the April 22, 1950, edition of the People’s Daily read:

This decision demands that newspapers and periodicals include the broader masses in the regular and systematic supervision of our work, turning attention to shortcomings and errors in our work in order that they are corrected, and that we are able to make steady progress forward. This is a serious step in greatly promoting the democratization of our country, and in improving the work of Party committees and governments at various levels.

From the outset, the “Decision” made clear that acts of criticism and self-criticism were to be made “publicly in newspapers and other publications.” Moreover, they were to be made “freely,” without government interference or the necessity of prior approval. “Responsibility for criticisms appearing in newspapers and other publications,” said the text of the decision, “is to be taken on independently by journalists and editors.”
The idea that the media should take the initiative in doing critical reporting was unfortunately short-lived. In July 1954, a new document, “CCP Central Committee Decision On the Improvement of Newspaper Work,” decisively overturned the post-facto discipline system at the heart of the 1950 decision on criticism and self-criticism. It sent a clear warning to journalists that exercising their own discretion in doing critical reporting could prove a fatal error of judgment. The CCP decision blandly maintained the principle that newspapers are “the most keen weapons the party uses to conduct criticism and self-criticism,” but it stressed the point that newspapers suffered from a “weak sense of party nature.”
By now, this should sound eerily familiar. Following on Xi Jinping’s words in his February 19, 2016, speech, Xiao Zhitao argued that critical reporting, or “supervision,” “must be tested by the Party nature.” Media must be surnamed Party.
The spirit of media criticism re-emerged in China in the reform era, a direct response to the evils of the post-1954 historical hole that had brought such nightmares as the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution.
Significantly, soon after the 1978 Third Plenary Session of the 11th CCP Central Committee that instituted the path of economic reforms, News Frontline, a communications journal run by the People’s Daily, republished in full the text of the April 1950 decision on criticism and self-criticism. The return of criticism marked a new era of reform, not just for the country but for its media.
An introductory note for the 1950 decision as it was printed in News Frontline in June 1979 read: “For a brief time in the past, this decision from the Party, promoted the exercise of criticism and self-criticism in newspapers and periodicals across the country. Today, turning up the heat on this decision, propagating and implementing its spirit, can still have an extremely important function for the news work of our entire party.” The new wave of debate and criticism encouraged by the “spirit” of the 1950 decision was also to be inclusive in nature: “We hope that various news units, and particularly the editorial departments, editors, journalists and correspondents of our newspapers, as well as the readers, can all participate in this discussion, sharing their opinions, demands and suggestions.”

This was never meant to be a relinquishing of media control. But it did reinstitute a tradition of media supervision of power. And in 1987, media supervision was given an even more prominent profile as then-Premier Zhao Ziyang included the term “supervision by public opinion” in this political report.
Even after Jiang Zemin reasserted media controls in the wake of the Tiananmen Massacre in June 1989, the tradition of criticism persisted, finding new and fertile ground in the industry upheaval of the 1990s.
During an official visit in October 1998 to China Central Television’s popular Focus news magazine program, Premier Zhu Rongji said the program’s role was to “[conduct] supervision by public opinion, be the mouthpiece of the masses, a mirror for the government, and the vanguard of reforms.” For Zhu, the press — and in particular, the contentious press — was the most faithful mirror of the party’s deficiencies. While critical coverage advanced the reform agenda, positive propaganda held China back:

What does it mean to emphasise positive news? Does it mean 99 percent positive news? How about 98 percent, or 80 percent? Wouldn’t 51 percent still be acceptable? Most programs are all about propaganda results, and just one or two point out problems occurring in the course of our forward progress, mobilising the full force of the party in dealing with these problems. This is a far more effective way of doing things than purely looking at propaganda results. Without programs like yours, the voices of the masses could not be expressed. And how then could we talk about democracy? How could we talk about supervision? Everyone must get used to this sort of criticism.

The Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping cannot “get used to this sort of criticism.” When Xi Jinping launched his “mass line” effort to grapple with corruption in June 2013 — telling officials to “gaze into the mirror, straighten their outfits, bathe, and treat their illnesses”  ——  his “mirror” was not the media, and certainly not contentious media. His mirror was the CCP Constitution.
Supervision under Xi Jinping is to be an internal matter, a backstage ritual. Criticism must be managed, supervision supervised. We might say that the PRC’s second era of critical reporting is at its end, at least as a matter of policy.
The gap is closed. Positive propaganda and supervision are unified.
Welcome to 1954.
 

THE “Birthday Paper” is an approach to the research of Chinese media history pioneered at the University of Hong Kong by Qian Gang, director of the China Media Project. Students in Qian’s course, “Understanding China Through the Media,” turn to the archives of core official media — including the People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily — to explore news events that unfolded around the birthday of a parent.
Given this week’s start, on May 16, of the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, I would like to share a partial translation of a recent “birthday paper” by Luo Xiaoyue (罗晓月), a master’s student at Peking University’s Shenzhen Graduate School.
Luo’s piece, which explores the outlandish claims made in July 1966 over Mao Zedong’s swimming prowess, is a wonderful look at the absurdity and senselessness of the stories often peddled by China’s propaganda mouthpieces during the Cultural Revolution and beyond.

Does “Sailing the Seas” Require Swimming Technique? Mao Zedong VS Sun Yang
By Luo Xiaoyue (罗晓月)
PREFACE by Qian Gang
In 1978 I was serving as a cultural officer in the Shanghai garrison. As I was on duty on July 16, I received a phone call from a senior officer. “Comrade Qian Gang, what day is it today?” he asked. All of sudden I was tongue-tied. The senior officer said: “Please help me out by preparing a swimming event. Had you forgotten? Today is the anniversary of Chairman Mao swimming the Yangtze!” Notice that this phone call came after the end of the Cultural Revolution, but the legend of “7.16” still persisted.

*******
MY FATHER was born on July 16, 1966. And on the day after dad was born, Chairman Mao swam the Yangtze River. News of this appeared in the July 25, 1966, edition of the People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily, appearing prominently on both front pages.
According to the People’s Daily, Chairman Mao swam a 15 kilometre course in the Yangtze River in just 65 minutes, a speed of 3.842 metres per second.
What I found particularly curious, however, was that according to these news reports “Chairman Mao swam 15 kilometres in 1 hour and 5 minutes.” So we can calculate that Mao Zedong, who was then already in his seventies, swam at a speed of 3.842 metres per second.

On August 4, 2012, during the London Olympics, China’s Sun Yang (孙杨) won gold in the 1500 metre freestyle with a time of 14 minutes 31.02 seconds, setting a new world record. This means Sun clocked in at 1.722 metres per second.
If Sun Yang’s Olympic champion speed could be sustained over 15 kilometres, his swim [across the Yangtze] would take over 2 hours. So Mao Zedong’s reported speed for his July 17, 1966, swim was twice as fast as Sun Yang. I found this to be an astonishing comparison, that the 73 year-old Mao Zedong could swim so much faster than a young Olympic champion.

What would happen if we could superimpose these two moments and time and allow these two swimmers compete?
Naturally, a river and a swimming pool are different environments, and in rivers you have to think as well about currents.
According to relevant reports at the time and accounts from eyewitnesses, Mao Zedong chose to enter the water in the place where the current was fastest — and we can add to this the fact that in June and July the current in the Yangtze is rather fast.

Continuing our calculations we find that currents in the Yangtze River range in speed from 1 to 2 metres per second. So on the basis of that faster of these, 2 metres per second, we can calculate the speeds of each of our swimmers.
Mao Zedong: 15 km/3,600 seconds-2mps = 1.842 mps
Sun Yang: 1,500 metres/14 minutes 31.02 seconds =1.722 mps
The result we get is still quite a shocker. Even when we allow for the speed of river currents, Mao Zedong is faster than Sun Yang.
Surely, the People’s Daily and Liberation Army Daily are guilty of serious exaggeration, right? In fact, newspapers in Taiwan at the time uncovered this “bug.”
On July 26, 1966, Taiwan’s United Daily reported on Mao Zedong’s swim in the Yangtze and used calculations provided by sports expert Chen Fuyu (陈福榆) based on world swimming records. The newspaper calculated that with the river current accounting for about 70 percent of the total speed, the course on the Yangtze would take 72 minutes if world record speed was maintained. But Mao Zedong’s time was 65 minutes. “Well, it would seem that his speed surpassed that of world champions,” the newspaper wrote. “The absurdity of this lie,” the article added, “draws laughter from outside China.”
Still, Mao Zedong was an accomplished swimmer. He swam the Yangtze River 17 times between 1956 and 1966, each time in Wuhan, Hubei province.

A VOCAL concert was held on May 2 in the auditorium of the Great Hall of the People, one of China’s most potent symbols of political power. The extravagant affair, which organisers later described as “an event to get the blood of the Chinese people boiling with righteousness,” featured 30 “red songs,” or hong ge (红歌) — a term that refers generally to the patriotic hymns of the Maoist era through to the end of the Cultural Revolution.
This was, in other words, a Maoist revival.
As an all-female choir belted out the words of one red classic, “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman,” the video backdrop showed an image of Mao Zedong beaming from a sunburst, followed by the deep red of an undulating national flag. Then came images of President Xi Jinping on an inspection trip to the countryside, greeting ecstatically happy farmers.
The round face of one helmsman juxtaposed with the round face of another, each promising glory and prosperity.
In sailing the seas we depend on the helmsman,
Just as all living things depend on the sun.
Wet with rain and dew the crops will thrive,
Just as Mao Zedong Thought keeps the revolution alive.
Fish cannot live away from the water,
Melons must stay on their vines.
The revolutionary masses must cleave to the Party.
Mao Zedong Thought is the sun that ever shines.
This extravaganza, nostalgically called “On the Field of Hope”  — after another Communist Party anthem popularised by celebrity singer and now first lady Peng Liyuan — — had been organised by the Central Propaganda Department’s Socialist Core Values Publicity and Education Office (中央宣传部社会主义核心价值观宣传教育办公室), apparently a senior propaganda office with substantial clout. As such, the event seemed to indicate a worrisome shift to the ideological left as China marked the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution.
But all of this was about to unwind.
On May 5, an open letter emerged on the internet from Ma Xiaoli (马晓力), the daughter of former minister of labour Ma Wenrui (马文瑞) — and a “princeling” who in the past has spoken out on the Chinese Communist Party’s legacy and future. Addressed to Li Zhanshu (栗战书), director of the General Office of the CCP, the letter called the recent concert in the Great Hall of the People “a reproduction of the Cultural Revolution.”
“For them to use this means to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution is entirely in defiance of the political discipline of the Party,” Ma wrote.
Internet photo of Ma Xiaoli, posted by Phoenix Online to an interview with Ma since removed from the web.
Soon after news of Ma’s open letter surfaced through online posts and discussions on WeChat, Zhang Hongliang (张宏良), a writer and social commentator who has earned some renown as a pundit on the extreme left, went on the attack, suggesting those who criticised the May 2 event were “traitors.”
Zhang wrote:

This matter once again demonstrates the truth of the basic assessment we have had for years: that the thorough rejection of the Cultural Revolution has already become a political dagger with which traitors and the extreme right seek to slay our Party and our nation . . . Their demonisation of China’s Cultural Revolution has already entirely surpassed the demonisation of Nazi Germany and Japanese militarism, and these who have submitted a letter to the central Party leadership all say the Cultural Revolution was “inhumane and anti-human, a great disaster and a great regression in Chinese history; it left behind an unprecedented historical scar.” Any such denunciation of the Cultural Revolution is entirely making public opinion preparations for the United States and other Western nations in [plotting the] extinction of the Chinese nation!

Things took an unexpected turn on May 6, when the China National Opera & Dance Drama Theatre, one of the event’s hosts, announced in a formal statement posted to its website that the group with which it had cooperated for the “On the Field of Hope” event — the so-called Central Propaganda Department Socialist Core Values Publicity and Education Office — was a “fake organisation” that had “provided fake materials swindling the trust of our theatre.” The theatre pledged that it would “pursue the responsibility of “relevant persons.”

[ABOVE: China’s National Opera & Dance Theatre posts a notice on its official website saying it was deceived by an organisation identified as a sub-office of the Central Propaganda Department.]
How is this possible? How could a “fake” education office portray itself as attached to the Central Propaganda Department and manage to hold a major propaganda event lauding Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People?
This is very curious indeed. Even more curious is the fact that the event hosted by the Socialist Core Values Publicity and Education Office certainly did seem to have an official imprimatur as it was pre-announced earlier this month. However, Xinhua News Agency coverage of the “On the Field of Hope” event, posted on May 3, has now vanished. See the China Digital Times for an archived version of the Xinhua article.
What cracks are these we are witnessing?
For the moment, allow me to set aside these complicated questions. At the very least, we can say that the upshot of this unexpected controversy is that the Cultural Revolution — generally a taboo topic inside China — is now the subject of some level of discussion on the eve of the 50th anniversary.
For now, I’ll just share Mao Xiaoli’s response on WeChat to the counter-attack by Zhang Hongliang.

What is Zhang Hongliang Trying to Do?
Mao Xiaoli (马晓力) / May 6, 2016 / WeChat
I thank Zhang Hongliang for showing his cards concerning his support for the Cultural Revolution. He says that “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman” is not a Cultural Revolution song. Well then, I’d like to ask Zhang Hongliang, did you not hear this song at all during the Cultural Revolution, as it was blasted daily through the loudspeakers, or did you just not hear it enough?
On May 2, 2016, a performance troupe performs “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman” in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
You frequently brand others as traitors on the extreme right, and what evidence do you have? Please present it! Such an accusation is enough to sentence others to death. A traitor, after all, is one who has committed the grave crime of betraying his country. And to be on the extreme right once meant being sent of to a labour camp, or to prison! What exactly is it you are plotting by casting these malicious words about with such conceit? If you can present no evidence these are just false charges! They are spurious accusations! This is no longer the Cultural Revolution, a time when you can wildly curse and insult others, when you can wantonly pin a crime on any person. When you open your mouth and harm others like this, issuing false charges, it’s entirely possible you’ll be sued for defamation, don’t you know! Perhaps this has become a habit of yours, to violate the reputations of others so casually!
You say foreign journalists have interviewed me. I’m sorry, but can you be specific about when and where the interview with this supposed foreign journalist took place? Without bothering to get the most basic of facts straight, you launch right into the labelling, striking out with your club and spraying poison willy nilly. It seems to me you must be crazy! What, I wonder, can you possibly want? I truly have no idea. I heard long ago about you, this key figure at Utopia [a leftist website in China], but only now do I understand your viciousness and arrogance. In my view, you truly are an insane person left behind by the “Gang of Four.” Your mouth is packed full of Cultural Revolution language. I suppose this must be a personal skill the Cultural Revolution bequeathed to you, and perhaps you feel disappointed that such and such a person never secretly made you propaganda chief. You are truly insane!
You even raise a hue and cry saying that: “For China today, which has already reached the edge of crisis and war, the quickest and most effective way to bring our whole people together is to sing red songs to whip up the ideals, emotions and hopes of the people.” So were you perhaps especially active back in Chongqing those days [during Bo Xilai’s singing red campaigns], having gained insights for certain people. And you go so far as to offer your brave reading to incite others, suggesting that we have “already reached the edge of crisis.” Is this the spirit of the central Party, do you think? What exactly is your intention with this shameless clamour about crisis and war? What is it you want? And most laughably: Why are you in such a hurry? You imagine that singing red songs is “quickest and most effective” in mobilising and stimulating the public, and that if the people are without ideals or ideas, red songs alone can spark their ideals, emotions and hopes? You woefully underestimate the people, I think! The end of the Cultural Revolution happened 40 years ago. How is it you have borne the “Gang of Four” in mind so faithfully ever since, brooding over their fall? What exactly is in that heart of yours?! What were you doing during the Cultural Revolution? What role did you play? Please, show us your face!
Ma Xiaoli
May 6, 2016

“Spreading positive energy,” the idea that China can transform itself through a collective focus on everything that can possibly go right, has become one of President Xi Jinping’s most favoured catchphrases in the arena of information control. The term, to its credit, is almost refreshingly fluid — so unlike the immovable granite of much Communist Party discourse.
Xi Jinping has spoken with some urgency about the Party facing a “new age” of communications and public opinion, challenged by new technologies. And “positive energy,” we might say, is fittingly New Agey.
The Party’s sense of “positive energy,” which can be shared and transmitted with a touch of the fingertip, is progressive and accumulative — as though the nation’s future might be supercharged through the sheer will of a collective sociability that acquiesces to the Party’s status as an unfailing source of national power and prestige.
The more “positive energy” is shared, the better off we all become. A Ponzi scheme of modern propaganda.

“Positive energy” nicely encapsulates the more playful approach to Party propaganda that has brought us such gems in recent years as a groovy animated band jamming about the 13th Five Year Plan atop a hippie-van emblazoned with “13.5,” a rapid-fire rap song about Party discipline, and, just last month, an animated video in which the president wields a giant club and plays whack-a-mole with corrupt officials popping up across a map of China.
But “positive energy” is also distinct from propaganda catchphrases of the past in the way it dynamically involves all Chinese in a national project of self-control. “Correct guidance of public opinion” is no longer merely a top-down imposition of discipline exercised by commissars in the Central Propaganda Department or the Cyberspace Administration of China. It is, quite literally, in our hands.
“Positive energy” puts the mobile in mobilisation.
Once propaganda controls have been popularised, it logically follows that there is no shame in complicity. Which brings us to a video posted yesterday on the WeChat account of the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Youth League, the official youth movement of the Chinese Communist Party.
The video, an animation produced by the Youth Micro-Studio (青微工作室), characterises the so-called Bring-Your-Own-Grainers (BYOGs) — online propagandists who work for the interests of the Party and the nation without compensation, unlike the much-despised Fifty-Cent Party — as selfless heroes working to combat the rumours and falsehoods spread by “elites and intellectuals” (portrayed as zombie-like figures who are “constantly complaining about the system”). The BYOGs, says the video, “may not seem noble or fancy, nor do they sound so cool.” But they have nothing to apologise for, and “they glorify in their work to clean up the online environment.”
Our partial translation of the video script follows.

Me and the Engine of My Nation / Let Us Toast the Bring-Your-Own-Grainers, That We May Become Them In Our Next Life!
April 12, 2016 / Chinese Communist Youth League Propaganda Department
The Legend of the Bring-Your-Own-Grainers【自干五传奇】
The internet
is a mysterious place. 
Here
you can do business and seek information, 
read the news and talk with your friends, 
and talk friends into becoming girlfriends.
You can, once you’ve finished your Winter Break homework, 
get three or four of your friends together for an online engagement on the battlefield. 
You can download a high-resolution version of the Calabash Brothers. 
And online you can buy clothes, food and tickets, 
or even sanitary pads by the box.
The web has pulled the gaps of the world together. 
Therefore, 
we talk about our world in the internet era as 
a global village.

At the entrance to the global village there grows a large tree. 
Beneath the large tree is a patch of shade. 
After dinner the people of the neighbourhood — 
aunts, grandparents and nephews — 
always like to gather here, 
chattering about this and that, 
sharing the most recent news, 
griping about this and that, 
offering simple readings of international events. 
There is a formal name for that spot of shade. 
They call it social media.

What characterises social media is
that everyone can have their say. 
1.3 billion people can all put a word in. 
If there’s too much information to read it all, just forget it. 
The key is that the are many versions of all information, 
so we’re all in the fog,
unable to see clearly what’s real and what’s fake, 
what’s right and what’s wrong.

The bickering [$%^#$&], the war of words begins from this point.
On this side, 
a huge wave of elites and public intellectuals, 
spreading rumours to liven things up.
On that side, 
a wave of “Fifty Centers” who post and collect their change, 
against those American “Five Centers” who post and collect their nickels. 
Lips and tongues fighting like guns and swords, 
each side polite and cruel at turns.

Professors transform into frightening creatures of myth, 
and experts pile on the nonsense.
The bickering that once took place on the street
has now given way to a world of virtual air strikes. 
The entire web can truly be called 
a place where rumors swarm 
and profanities run wild.

But at last 
there is a group of people who will stand for it no longer, 
a group of people who are resolute, 
putting their feet down, 
planting their flags, 
sleeping early and waking early, 
ready to face those public intellectuals and elites 
and their swarming rumors
and “battle to the end.”

These people are culturally rich, 
meticulous in their logic, 
fierce in their fighting strength. 
They make the public intellectuals and elites restless with anxiety.

Thereupon, 
the [intellectuals], with their shady understanding, 
make a “reasonable” conjecture: 
that these people must be
paid 1.2 yuan for each post or something. 
They must be “the fighter jets of the Fifty-Centers” — or “top-grade Fifty-Centers.”
“Hah? Compensation, you say? What compensation? 
Our grain comes from the pockets of our own family!”
And so, 
a novel and noble name — 
“The Fifty-Centers Who Bring Their Own Grain” — 
is born!
As the unbeatable rivals of intellectuals and elites, 
The “Bring-Your-Own-Grainers” may not seem noble or fancy,
nor do they sound so cool. 
But they don’t care about that. 
They despise the Fifty-Centers for taking money at all. 
All the more do they despise that “Imperial Army” paid in American cents. 
They are proud of their work as Bring-Your-Own-Grainers. 
And they glorify in their work to clean up the online environment.
Each of them are different. 
They don’t know one another. 
But they share these qualities in common: 
They love peace, freedom, justice and the world. 
They hold the right values, are upstanding — standing for what’s right, not in the “right” group
They are unorganised but disciplined, with ideals and a sense of boundaries.
Let us raise our cups
and toast the Bring-Your-Own-Grainers,
that we may become them in our next life. 
For now, 
let us begin by moving 
our fingers!

It will take many months to unpack the implications of the new and comprehensive media policy Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined on February 19, and many more to understand and observe its real impact.

For the time being, we can rely on the various explications appearing in official state media to help cut shovel through the slush of official discourse. To that purpose, we present the following (roughly 75%) translation of a recent People’s Daily Online compilation of quotes from Xi Jinping’s various “important speeches” dealing with media policy since 2013.

The compilation, which is titled, “Xi Jinping’s View On News and Public Opinion,” is arranged according to category. There is a section on “the principle of Party character” — including the now very loudly touted notion that all media must be “surnamed Party” (必须姓党) — another on the importance of “correct guidance of public opinion” (the Jiang Zemin phrase equating media control and political control), still another on the role of the military press.

Perhaps the most colourful of Xi Jinping’s utterances in this collection is one under the section dealing with the need to “innovate” propaganda to suit a changing information environment. “Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles,” says China’s Kraken-in-Chief, “and that is where we find the focal point and end point of propaganda and ideology work.”

“Xi Jinping’s View On News and Public Opinion”
People’s Daily Online / February 25, 2016
Raise high the banner (高举旗帜) [of Marxism-Leninism], direct [proper] guidance (引领导向) [of public opinion], focus on the central tasks (围绕中心”) [of the Party], unite the people (团结人民), encourage high morale (鼓舞士气), spread public morals (成风化人), create cohesion (凝心聚力), clear up fallacies (澄清谬误), distinguish between truth and falsehood (明辨是非), join China and the outside (联接中外), connect with the world (沟通世界).
A new turning point is upon us. February 19, 2016, was an important day that all people in the media will remember. That morning, General Secretary Xi Jinping made inspection visits to three central-level news units, the People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television; in the afternoon, he hosted the Party’s news and public opinion work conference, delivering an important speech.
At the conference, the general secretary addressed his “theory of responsibility and mission” (职责使命论) for the Party’s news and public opinion work under the conditions of the new era. He introduced a 48-character [formula of] “mission and responsibility for the Party’s news and public opinion work” (党的新闻舆论工作职责使命), clearly outlining basic instructions to apply for news and public opinion work.
The general secretary places great priority on news and public opinion work. On August 19, 2013, at the national work conference on propaganda and ideology, he gave an important speech in which he emphasised that “the internet is the priority of priorities” (网络是重中之重); On August 18, 2014, at the fourth conference of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms, the general secretary gave an important speech on the integrated development of traditional media and emerging media.
Aside from these [dates], when visiting the People’s Liberation Army Daily (December 25, 2015), at the opening ceremony of the 2nd Wuzhen Summit (December 16, 2015), at the first meeting of the Office of the Central Leading Group of Cyberspace Affairs (February 27, 2014) and on other occasions, the general secretary focussed during his speeches on issues relating to news and public opinion.
Today, we have organised Xi Jinping’s remarks related to news and public opinion since the 18th National Congress of the CCP. These remarks not only make clear the “mission and responsibility” [of the media], and emphasise the “principle of the Party character” (党性原则) [of the media], but also [deal with] a series of questions, such as how to accommodate profound changes to the media landscape (媒体格局) and the public opinion ecology (舆论生态), how to deal with the profound changes brought on by new media, and how to better transmit China’s voice in an international public opinion ecology in which “the West is strong while China is weak” (西强我弱), offering pertinent solutions.
The “press view” (新闻观) and “methodology” (方法论) expounded by the general secretary arouses not only those in the media, but also holds lessons for those in other lines of work.
On the Principle of Party Character (谈党性原则)

*The Party’s news and propaganda work is a major matter for national governance and national peace and stability (党的新闻舆论工作是治国理政、定国安邦的大事)

The Party’s news and public opinion work is an important work matter for the Party, a major matter for national governance and national peace and stability. [The Party and the media] must grasp their position [and role] with the overall work of the Party as the point of departure, and accommodating situational developments domestically and internationally; [They must] adhere to the leadership of the Party, adhere to correct political orientation, adhere to a work guidance of people at the core, respect the principles of news and communication, innovate their methods, and effectively improve the propagation force (传播力), guiding capacity (引导力), influence (影响力) and credibility (公信力) of the Party’s news and public opinion. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*The principle media of the central Party breath as one with the Party and the people, and progress with the times. (中央主要媒体与党和人民同呼吸, 与时代共进步)

For a long time, the principle media of the central Party have breathed as one with the Party and the people, and progressed with the times, actively propagating the principles of Marxism, propagating the positions of the Party, reflecting the opinions of the masses, serving an extremely important role during various historical periods of revolutionary construction and reform.— February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference

*The proper exercise of the Party’s news and public opinion work concerns our banner and our path. (做好党的新闻舆论工作，事关旗帜和道路)

The proper exercise of the Party’s news and public opinion work concerns our banner and our path; concerns the implementation of the Party’s theory, political line and policies; concerns the smooth progress of the various endeavours of the Party and the government; concerns the cohesion and team spirit of the various peoples across the nation; concerns the prospects and destiny of the Party and the nation. [We] must have a grasp of news and public opinion work from the point of view of the overall work of the Party, giving it high priority in our thinking and being precise and forceful in our work. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*The mission and responsibility of the Party’s news and public opinion work (党的新闻舆论工作的职责和使命)

Under the new conditions of our era, the mission and responsibility of the Party’s news and public opinion work is to: raise high the banner (高举旗帜) [of Marxism-Leninism], direct [proper] guidance (引领导向) [of public opinion], focus on the central tasks (围绕中心) [of the Party], unite the people (团结人民), encourage high morale (鼓舞士气), spread public morals (成风化人), create cohesion (凝心聚力), clear up fallacies (澄清谬误), distinguish between truth and falsehood (明辨是非), join China and the outside (联接中外), connect with the world (沟通世界). [The media] must take on this mission and responsibility, [and they] must place political orientation (政治方向) before all else, firmly adhering to the principle of the Party nature [of the media], firmly adhering to the Marxist View of Journalism (马克思主义新闻观), firmly adhering to correct guidance of public opinion (正确舆论导向), and firmly adhering to an emphasis on positive propaganda (正面宣传为主). — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*[The media] must uphold the Party’s leadership of news and public opinion work (要坚持党对新闻舆论工作的领导)

The Party’s news and public opinion work must adhere to the principle of the Party character, cleaving fundamentally to the Party’s leadership of news and public opinion work. Media run by the Party and government are propaganda positions of the Party and the government, and they must reflect the Party (必须姓党) [lit., “be surnamed Party”]. All work of the Party’s news and public opinion media must reflect (体现) the will of the Party, mirror (反映) the views of the Party, preserve the authority of the Party, preserve the unity of the Party, and achieve love of the Party, protection of the Party and acting for the Party (爱党、护党、为党); they must all increase their consciousness of falling in line, maintaining a high level of uniformity (高度一致) with the Party in ideology, politics and action. All must uphold the unity of the Party character and people character (党性和人民性相统一), ensuring that the Party’s theories and policies become conscious actions among the masses, reflecting the experiences of the masses and the real situation facing them in a timely manner, enriching the spiritual world of the people [NOTE: this refers to such cultural life and entertainment], and enhancing the people’s spiritual strength. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*The Party nature of the military press (军报姓党) must be upheld in the proper operation of the People’s Liberation Army Daily

The Party nature of the military press (军报姓党) must be upheld in the proper operation of the People’s Liberation Army Daily under the new situation [NOTE: The reference translated “Party nature” here is literally “the military press must be surnamed Party”.] The People’s Liberation Army Daily is led and controlled by the Party, directly serves the people’s army under the leadership of the Party, and it must uphold the highest standards and strictest demands in cleaving to the principle of the Party character. [The paper] must unshakeably support the Party’s absolute leadership of the military, must be unswerving in maintaining a high level of unity with the central Party in ideology, politics and action, must conscientiously protect the authority of the central Party and the Central Military Commission, and must unswervingly propagate the voice of the central Party and the Central Military Commission. This is the political spirit the People’s Liberation Army Daily must preserve, and this must never at any moment be forgotten or discarded. The military press are surnamed Party, and they must love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party (爱党、护党、为党), making every effort to consolidate and strengthen the mainstream public opinion so that the views of the Party become the dominant voice. — December 25, 2015, Important Speech During a Visit to the People’s Liberation Army Daily
[Upholding the] Party nature of the military press (军报姓党), with a strong army as the base and innovation as the task

[The military press] must closely follow the strong-nation strong-army course, upholding the spirit of reform and innovation, adhering to the Party character of the military press (lit. “military press surnamed Party”), adhering to a strong military as the base and adhering to innovation as the task, working to ensure that the People’s Liberation Army daily is stronger in terms of its politics, stronger in terms of its transmission [capacity], stronger in terms of its influence, and ensuring there is strong ideological and public opinion support for the Chinese dream and the dream of a strong military. — December 25, 2015, Important Speech During a Visit to the People’s Liberation Army Daily
*The People’s Liberation Army Daily is the Party’s mouthpiece within the military
Founded on January 1, 1956, the People’s Liberation Army Daily is the official organ of the Party’s Central Military Commission, an important battle position of our Party’s and our military’s propaganda and ideology work, and also a special character of the Party’s leadership of the military. Over the past 60 years, the People’s Liberation Army Daily has drawn breath with the Party and the people, sharing their fate, in step with national security and military building . . . . — December 25, 2015, Important Speech During a Visit to the People’s Liberation Army Daily
. . . .
*Ideological work is a task of extreme importance for the Party
Economic construction is the core work of the Party, ideological work is a task of extreme importance for the Party. — February 19–20, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
On Guidance of Public Opinion (谈舆论导向)

*Singing the main theme, transmitting positive energy (唱响主旋律，传播正能量)

Since the 18th National Congress of the CCP, the principal media of the central Party have emphasised propaganda surrounding the spirit of the 18th National Congress, and of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Plenums, explaining the important decisions and work plan of the central Party, reflecting the great experiences and spirit of the people, singing the main theme [of the Party], transmitting positive energy (传播了正能量), and energetically stirring the great force of the entire Party, entire nation and all the people toward the realisation of the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*Unity, stability and encouragement, and emphasising positive propaganda (团结稳定鼓劲、正面宣传为主)

Unity, stability and encouragement, and emphasising positive propaganda — these are basic policies that must be followed in the Party’s news and public opinion work. In doing a proper job of positive propaganda, [we must] increase the attractiveness and infectiveness [of media products]. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference

*In all aspects and at all stages, we must adhere to the correct guidance of public opinion (各个方面、各个环节都要坚持正确舆论导向)

In the various aspects and stages of news and public opinion work, [we must] adhere to the correct guidance of public opinion. Party newspapers and journals at various levels, and television and radio stations all must abide by correct guidance (讲导向), and all metropolitan newspapers and magazines (都市类报刊) and new media must also abide by correct guidance. News reports must abide by correct guidance, and supplements, special programs, advertising and publicity must also abide by correct guidance; current affairs news must abide by correct guidance, and entertainment and social forms of the news must also abide by correct guidance; domestic news reports must abide by correct guidance, and international news reports must also abide by correct guidance. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*Deriving spiritual strength and the “zero point indicator” from the People’s Daily (从人民日报里寻找精神力量和“定盘星”)

The People’s Daily is the Party’s battle position. Back in the early days comrade Mao Zedong himself wrote the name of the People’s Daily. The whole Party and the whole nation derive their spiritual strength and their “zero point indicator” from the People’s Daily. In adapting to change and continuing to strengthen, the most critical thing is to not forget our original intentions, and to remain firm in our beliefs; we must hold our news and public opinion position, and we must advance with the times. I hope everyone always works steadily for new goals. The central Party supports you, and I also support you. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*Online public opinion and propaganda must uphold the main theme (网络舆论宣传要弘扬主旋律)

Doing a proper job of online public opinion work is a long-term task, and we must innovate and advance online propaganda, using the principles of Internet communication, upholding the main theme, inciting positive energy (激发正能量), actively cultivating and putting into practice socialist core values, having a good grasp of timeliness, intensity and effect in online public opinion channeling, ensuring a clear and bright online space. — February 27, 2014, Important Speech to the First Meeting of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs
*Mainstream ideology and public opinion must be adhered to, consolidated and expanded (必须坚持巩固壮大主流思想舆论)
Unity, stability and encouragement, and emphasising positive propaganda — these are basic policies that must be followed in the Party’s news and public opinion work. We are now in the midst of a great struggle (伟大斗争) with many new historical characteristics, and the challenges and difficulties we face are unprecedented; [We] must adhere to, consolidate and expand mainstream ideology and public opinion, promoting the main theme, transmitting positive energy (传播正能量), and inciting the great strength of unity and advancement throughout the entire society. Most critical is to raise the level and quality [of propaganda], properly grasping the timeliness, intensity and effect, raising attractiveness and infectiveness, so that the masses enjoy watching and listening, so that resonance is created, fully using positive propaganda to boost morale and motivate the people. — February 19–20, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
*Increasing the first-move advantage, grasping the initiative and striking the first blow (增强主动性、掌握主动权、打好主动仗)

On questions of truth and falsehood in terms of political principles, we must increase our first-move advantage (主动性), grasping the initiative (掌握主动权), striking the first blow (主动仗), helping cadres and the masses distinguish the line between truth and falsehood and clearing away ambiguities. — February 19–20, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
On Innovation and Integration (谈创新融合)

Accelerating the construction of a new pattern of public opinion channeling (加快构建舆论引导新格局)

Along with situational developments, the Party’s news and public opinion work must innovate its concepts, content, types, forms, methods, means, operational approaches, systems and mechanisms, increasing its directionality and effectiveness. We must accommodate the trends of segmentation and differentiation, accelerating the building of a new pattern of public opinion channeling. — February 19–20, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference

Where the readers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles (读者在哪里，宣传报道的触角就要伸向哪里)

To operate the People’s Liberation Army Daily properly under the new situation, we must persist in innovation as our task. Right now, the patterns of the media, the public opinion ecology, the media pattern, target audiences and communications technologies are undergoing profound change — and the Internet in particular is driving a transformation in the media sector such as we have never before seen. Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles, and that is where we find the focal point and end point of propaganda and ideology work. — December 25, 2015, Important Speech During a Visit to the People’s Liberation Army Daily
. . . . [FOUR QUOTES NOT TRANSLATED HERE] . . . .
On Professional Behaviour (谈专业素质)

* Media competition is most crucially about the competition for talent (媒体竞争关键是人才竞争)

Media competition is most crucially about the competition for talent, and the core advantage of the media lies in the talent advantage. [We] must accelerate the fostering and creation of a news and public opinion work corps that is politically resolute, capable and diligent, in whom the Party and the people can place their trust. News and public opinion workers must enhance their consciousness of [the fact that] politicians run the newspapers (政治家办报), and they must find the correct measure in surrounding the centre [of the Party leadership] and serving the overall situation, bearing in mind social responsibility, constantly answering the fundamental question of “who am I working for, who do I rely on and who am I?” . . . — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
. . . . [ONE QUOTE NOT TRANSLATED HERE] . . . .
On International Transmission (谈国际传播)

Serving as a bridge and belt that creates mutual trust and unites strengths (做增信释疑、凝心聚力的桥梁纽带)

I hope that the 30th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Daily Overseas Edition is a starting point, that we can gather our experiences, utilise our advantages and work in a spirit of innovation, using methods that overseas readers enjoy and accept, and language that they can understand, to explain the China story, to transmit China’s voice, to work hard to become a bridge and belt to create mutual trust and unite strengths. — May 2015, Remarks to Commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the the People’s Daily Overseas Edition
*Transmitting Chinese culture, telling China’s story properly (传播中国文化，讲好中国故事)

[We must] use our international transmission platform well in order to objectively, truly and vividly report the situation with respect to China’s economic and social development, transmitting Chinese culture, telling China’s story properly, and promoting wider and better understanding of China in foreign countries. — February 19, 2016, Important Speech During a Visit to China Central Television
*Strengthening the building of our international transmission capacity, enhancing our international discourse power (加强国际传播能力建设，增强国际话语权)

[We] must strengthen the building of our international transmission capacity, and enhance our international discourse power, telling China’s story properly in a centralised manner. At the same time we must optimise our strategic deployments, working hard to create flagship media for external propaganda that have relatively strong international influence. — February 19, 2016, Speech to the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Conference
. . . . [FOUR ENTRIES NOT TRANSLATED HERE] . . . .

For those of you searching for an original digital image of the front page of the Shenzhen edition of Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily, which included a “hidden-head” message in coverage of Xi Jinping’s newly-announced media policy, we share the image here.

While most, if not all, major newspapers on February 20 ran the announcement of President Xi’s visit to media along with a photo of Xi, editors at the Shenzhen edition chose to run instead a photo of the spreading at sea of the ashes of Yuan Geng (袁庚), a key founder of the Shekou Industrial Zone. Yuan died on January 31 at the age of 99.
The headline on the Yuan Geng story read: “A Soul Returns to the Sea.” If read together vertically with the headline directly over it, “Party and Government Media are Propaganda Positions and Must Be Surnamed Party,” the combined message could be understood to mean something like: “Media Are Surnamed Party, Their Souls Return to the Sea.”
The “hidden-head” message would be as follows:
媒体
姓党
魂归
大海

Were the editors trying to suggest that Xi Jinping’s stern treatment of the Chinese media was a death sentence for all semblance of professionalism?
Whatever the case, we have confirmed that one of the editors, Liu Cuixia (刘翠霞), the paper’s headline news editor, has been fired.

Three years ago, launching a “mass line” effort to close the widening gap between the public and the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping urged officials to take stock of themselves. Leaders, he said, must “gaze into the mirror” and “straighten their outfits.” They must, in other words, seek constant self-improvement and purification.

But what if that mirror is distorted? What if it casts back your own self-image, refracting and sublimating your imperfections? What if the mirror tells you only what you wish to hear?

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest of them all?
You, Dear Leader, are the fairest.

The People’s Daily is the best (if not the fairest) reflection we have of the Chinese Communist Party’s own self-image. We gaze into its pages to better understand how the Party, at any point in time, regards itself.

The February 20, 2016, edition of the People’s Daily — essentially a bold red birth announcement for Xi Jinping’s fully-developed media policy — tells us even more: What kind of reflection China’s leaders hope to see of themselves in the great mirror of domestic and international public opinion.

Xi Jinping’s media policy, which we might call “Control 3.0,” is a map for all-dimensional control (全方位控制) — that’s our term, not the Party’s — involving Party domination of the message as reflected in both domestic and international public opinion, across all imaginable media platforms (including advertising and entertainment).

News Friday that President Xi was paying visits to Xinhua News Agency, the People’s Daily and China Central Television was the first sign that announcement of a new or refined media policy was imminent. It was during a visit to People’s Daily in June 2008, more than five years into his administration, that Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, articulated his full-fledged media policy.

The front-page piece in the February 20 edition of the People’s Daily is an in-depth treatment of Xi Jinping’s “important speech” on the role of media. Further details may come over the next few weeks. But for now, we can summarise the various media policies of the past three leadership generations in the following way:

Jiang Zemin / Control 1.0: “Guidance of public opinion,” or yulun daoxiang (舆论导向), the notion that media control (the almost exclusive focus being domestic and Chinese-language), is essential to the maintenance of social and political stability. Emphasis of Party leadership of the media under the Mao-era notion of “politicians running the newspapers,” or zhengzhijia banbao (政治家办报), and the idea that public opinion control is for the benefit of the people (福祸论).

Hu Jintao / Control 2.0: “Channeling of public opinion,” or yulun yindao (舆论引导), the notion (more a refinement of “guidance”) that the Party should more actively direct coverage of breaking news events, and better exploit the resources of commercial media and the Internet to ensure the Party’s own agendas dominate. Increasing concern after 2007 with “soft power” development and transmitting “China’s [official] voice” overseas.

Xi Jinping / Control 3.0: The “48-character policy” (48字方针), an all-dimensional vision of comprehensive control across media platforms and bridging the domestic/international frames, articulated through 12 four-character phrases.

If the Jiang and Hu-era policies were encapsulated in the four-character phrases “public opinion guidance” and “public opinion channeling” respectively, we might say that Xi Jinping’s policy is encapsulated in the hardline phrase “public opinion struggle,” or yulun douzheng (舆论斗争), introduced in his August 19, 2013, speech. It may be too early to make that leap. The phrase does not appear in the People’s Daily coverage of Xi Jinping’s “important speech” on Friday. However, an accompanying official editorial (社论) in the People’s Daily does mention the phrase “ideological struggle,” or yishixingtai douzheng (意识形态斗争), which is essentially equivalent.

The “48-character policy” is an important new feature of Xi Jinping’s media control regime, promoted right at the top of the front page of the People’s Daily.

I’ll come back to these 12 phrases next week, but notice that the first four phrases along the top line all deal with the centrality of the Party and the need for media to serve its larger political agenda. They are: “raising high the banner” (高举旗帜), a reference to the primacy of socialism with Chinese characteristics; “public opinion leadership” (引领导向), essentially an invocation of Jiang-era “guidance” and the need for agenda control; “revolving around the centre” (围绕中心), meaning full obedience to the leadership of the Party’s Central Committee; and “serving the overall situation” (服务大局), meaning that expedient political considerations take precedence.

Nothing in there sounds very fresh. But Xi Jinping’s language is notably tough in comparison to that of his predecessors. Here is one passage from the People’s Daily:

The Party’s news and public opinion work must adhere to the principle of the Party character, cleaving fundamentally to the Party’s leadership of news and public opinion work. Media run by the Party and government are propaganda positions of the Party and the government, and they must reflect the Party (必须姓党) [lit., “be surnamed Party”]. All work of the Party’s news and public opinion media must reflect (体现) the will of the Party, mirror (反映) the views of the Party, preserve the authority of the Party, preserve the unity of the Party, and achieve love of the Party, protection of the Party and acting for the Party (爱党、护党、为党); they must all increase their consciousness of falling in line, maintaining a high level of uniformity (高度一致) with the Party in ideology, politics and action.

The talk of “maintaining a high level of uniformity” is unique in this context, and the passage about “love of the Party, protection of the Party and acting for the Party” is a Xi Jinping neologism we might expect to see entering dominant discourse. Both speak to a heightened sense of urgency about the need for media in all of its aspects to fall in line with the leadership.

Along with the “48-character policy,” the following passage from the People’s Daily can be regarded — for all its verbosity — as a refined statement of the Xi Jinping media control agenda:

He emphasised that the Party’s news and public opinion work is an important task for the Party, that it is a major matter concerning the management of national affairs and [the maintenance of] national peace and stability; [The Party and the media] must grasp their position [and role] with the overall work of the Party as the point of departure, and accommodating situational developments domestically and internationally; [They must] adhere to the leadership of the Party, adhere to correct political orientation, adhere to a work guidance of people at the core, respect the principles of news and communication, innovate their methods, and effectively improve the propagation force (传播力), guiding capacity (引导力), influence (影响力) and credibility (公信力) of the Party’s news and public opinion.

The all-dimensional nature of these controls becomes clearer further down in the People’s Daily treatment of Xi Jinping’s speech. The language is a noticeable departure from Hu Jintao’s focus on “channeling,” which prioritised agenda control in the event of major breaking news stories:

Xi Jinping pointed out that correct guidance of public opinion must be adhered to in all of the various aspects of news and public opinion work. Party newspapers and journals, and radio and television stations at all levels must abide by [correct] guidance; commercial tabloid newspapers and magazines (都市类报刊) and new media must abide by [correct] guidance; news reports must abide by [correct] guidance; publication supplements, special programs, advertising and publicity must abide by [correct] guidance; current affairs news must abide by [correct] guidance; entertainment and social news must also abide by [correct] guidance; domestic news reports must abide by [correct] guidance, and international news reports must also abide by [correct] guidance.

If Hu Jintao’s Control 2.0 approach was strategic and selective, Xi Jinping’s Control 3.0 approach is no-holds-barred. To the extent that President Xi addresses the need to “innovate” — for example, to “promote integrated development” — he is talking about the need for tightly controlled media to find new ways of aligning the Party’s demands and public demand. This strategic objective extends internationally, with a vision of “flagship external propaganda media.”

[We] must strengthen the building of our international communication capacity, increasing our international discourse power and focussing the proper telling of China’s story, at the same time optimising our strategic layout, working to build flagship external propaganda media that have rather strong reputations internationally.

Any sense we might have glimpsed in the Jiang and Hu eras of the need for “media reform” — in the loosest sense of improving the way media report and operate commercially and professionally — is now completely gone. Even innovation must revolve around the central priority of advancing the Party’s agenda.

And what about “supervision by public opinion,” or yulun jiandu (舆论监督), that mantle of officially recognised press scrutiny (sometimes translated “watchdog journalism”) that Party officials since Premier Zhao Ziyang have regarded as a necessary form of power monitoring?

“Supervision by public opinion” is the closest one can come in the Party’s mainstream press discourse to the idea that an honest, self-critical gaze has value. But Xi Jinping now distorts “supervision” with what has long been its polar opposite. “Supervision by public opinion and positive propaganda are unified,” says the summary in the People’s Daily.

Given the robustness of Xi Jinping’s efforts to remake public opinion in the Party’s image, the question of self-reflection and self-recognition takes on new urgency.

Will China, now on the brink of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution, have the capacity to see itself clearly? Will it remember what the country became when a single vain revolutionary was able to gaze into the pages of the People’s Daily, the Liberation Army Daily and Red Flag — the notorious “two papers and one journal” — and see a hallucination of himself gazing back?

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest of them all?
You, President Xi, are the fairest.