Now Executive Director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David originally joined the project in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).
One week ago we wrote about the ascendance in China of the propaganda term “positive energy” (正能量) — generally referring to news coverage, online content and cultural products that are uplifting in character, not dwelling on the negative side of Chinese society and politics. A few days later, we translated a report in the official Liaoning Daily attacking what it said was an overwhelming current of negativity about China among university instructors in the country.
Xi Jinping seems to be launching a full frontal attack on negativity. Not just in journalism, on the internet, in arts and culture, and in academia, mind you, but in China’s foreign and trade relations as well. “Positive energy” is a one-size-fits-all prescription targeting both dissent at home and “negativity” towards China in every other context.
If only it came in pill form. “Positive energy” seems to be Xi Jinping’s prescription for a whole range of domestic and international issues. Image from “HealthGauge” available at Flickr.com.
At the CCP’s forum on arts and culture in September, President Xi Jinping praised blogger Zhou Xiaoping, known for his fawning praise of all things officially Chinese. “Zhou Xiaoping,” said President Xi, shaking the blogger’s hand, “from here on out you must carry forward positive energy on the internet.” This mirrored what Lu Wei, the Beijing propaganda minister who is now China’s internet czar, said back in January 2013 when he issued a broad call for more “positive energy” on the web — a code for tighter controls in order to quiet dissenting and “negative” voices, like the Big Vs on Weibo Lu went after so aggressively just months later.
When Xi met with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 2012, he said that what the US-China relationship needed was more “positive energy.” And he told APEC leaders this month that regional economic cooperation was paramount and “it is hoped that all parties contribute positive energy to APEC’s long-term development.”
The emphasis on “positive energy” is about more than just attitude. It is about expunging dissent and silencing those “negative” voices that dwell on China’s problems.
The recent article in the Liaoning Daily has left some in China fearing that a new round of ideological controls is underway against those who dare to speak up — something akin, though this is so far a vast overstatement, to the anti-rightist campaigns of the 1950s.
Zhang Ming, a professor at Renmin University of China and a former CMP fellow, wrote on Tencent Weibo this weekend: “For some time I’ve heard people talking about how there is a new anti-rightist movement underway. I didn’t buy this at first, but the Liaoning Daily open letter to teachers made me believe. How many on the right will be arrested this time around?”
On Saturday, the Guangming Daily, published by China’s Central Propaganda Department, went so far as to identify a “group” of voices on the internet that it said sought to “slander” China with outright lies laced with quotes (Oh, horror!) from Westerners. An excerpt of the article, on page ten, follows:
In recent times two online groups have been engaged in fierce debate.
One of these groups the “citizen-intellectual” group (公知), combining together the identities of the “citizen” and the “intellectual.” They seek out the dark side of society and magnify them infinitely, then start making irresponsible remarks online while throwing in language from Westerners (洋人) — speaking lies with their eyes wide open . . .
There is another group called the “BYOG 50s” (自干五), “the 50 centers who bring their own grain,” meaning that out of their own will [without government pay] they praise positive energy in society (社会正能量). They are web users who offer encouragement for the development of China.
Those who disparage the “BYOG 50s” say they’re even worse than the “50 Cent Party” (五毛党) who get paid by the government. Not even paid, they have to bring their own food.
Here, I would like to say some things to stand firmly with the “BYOG 50s,” because they, with a factual attitude, carry out rational, historical and objective rumor-denying, explanation and criticism of language that slanders China.
. . . They are tolerant of those who are able to provide materials and offer rational argument — fundamentally unlike those so-called “citizen-intellectuals” and “elites” who view society with coloured glasses and use sharp and mocking language to attack the government and society.
An article on page 10 of the November 15, 2014, edition of Guangming Daily attacks “citizen-intellectuals” online for their “slander” of China. Article on upper-right.
As the Guangming Daily lobbed its attack on “elites” and “intellectuals,” Caixin Online, one of China’s most critical news voices in a media environment increasingly a wasteland of “positive energy,” interviewed Zhan Jiang, a professor of international journalism and communication at Beijing Foreign Languages University and a former CMP fellow, about the contention in Liaoning Daily that university instructors are too negative about China’s social problems.
Tellingly, perhaps, for the disciples of “positive energy” who grind their teeth over how intellectuals tend to quote Western ideas, Zhan threw Jurgen Habermas and John Milton into his Caixin interview.
By mid-day today, the Caixin interview with Zhan Jiang had been removed from the internet in China, yielding only a 404 Error.
And that, folks, is what “positive energy” looks like.
Below is a partial translation of the Caixin piece written from an interview with Zhan Jiang, followed by a few social media posts from Zhang Ming of Renmin University of China.
Zhan Jiang believes that while Liaoning Daily has a right to conduct watchdog journalism on social issues. But the public has an even greater right to fully know the sampling and investigative methods in order to be assured of the conclusions rigor. . .
Zhan Jiang said: “University teachers in the social sciences, humanities and philosophy in particular require a critical mindset in order to do research. If we want to change our society, if we want this society to improve, then first we have to identify our deficiencies and inadequacies.”
Lu Xun is remembered and celebrated as “the backbone of the Chinese people” because of his tough-love attitude, criticising ugly phenomena in China and awakening an awareness of the struggle.
Zhan Jiang disagrees with the accusations in the open letter, that criticisms of the society and nation in Chinese classrooms would lead to erroneous value systems in students just stepping out into the world, making them lose faith in society. University students, he said, are already mature and full of ideas. They are not vulnerable to indoctrination as they were in the closed-off era before economic reform and opening. Information is shared rapidly today, and students can access numerous sources via the internet. They are capable of forming their own opinions about society in the process of receiving various information. The teacher’s opinion is just one point of view. Students are able to think and form opinions on their own. According to John Milton’s theory of a “marketplace of ideas,” differing ideas can form an opinion marketplace where knowledge can emerge from among competing views.
Zhan Jiang pointed out finally that as a media, Liaoning Daily had the credentials to investigate and criticize university teachers. But whether this is done as journalism or social science research, the method of investigation should be rigorous in order to arrive at accurate conclusions. And so he hopes the paper is able to be open about the subject of investigation, it’s sampling methods and its investigation process.
Zhang Ming, of Renmin University, a frequent critic of China’s educational system, kept most of his criticism of the Liaoning Daily “report” on China’s university classrooms to Tencent Weibo. A few of his posts are translated below:
Of those attacking me on Weibo, saying I spread poison through my lectures, none have actually attended my classes. They can’t even utter a word about how I supposedly spread poison. In the same way, instructors who have had their classes suspended for punishment haven’t been presented with any reasons [for their being disciplined]. There are no procedures, there is no public debate, nor are they given any opportunity to defend themselves. Meanwhile, those who don’t take teaching seriously, who don’t know their stuff, who talk total nonsense — they face no consequences. Our universities care only about political correctness.
————-
In fact . . . The greatest problem among university instructors is not criticism of the government but lack of seriousness and expertise in teaching.
————-
In the history of world journalism, has there ever been undercover reporting of university instructors teaching class? Filming and recording in secret? The goal of Liaoning Daily is not to instruct or advise instructors on how to teach, but rather to gather evidence of guilt and hold these instructors to account.
————- Liaoning Daily has sent reporters undercover to collect materials for [political] smears. This isn’t normal reporting activity but cultural spying. This is essentially turning instructors into the enemy.
Now one of the hottest discussions on social media, the following article, printed in the November 13 edition of Liaoning Daily, the official Party newspaper of Liaoning province, is framed as an “open letter” to university teachers across China, and accuses them of being too “negative” about the country.
The Liaoning Daily claims that it dispatched reporters across the country for an “investigation” of Chinese classrooms, visiting “20 schools in five cities.” The paper found that many instructors in university settings were politically insensitive and overly critical, it said, of Chinese society and the “theoretical innovations” of the Chinese Communist Party. They were sometimes (tisk, tisk) over-complimentary of Western ideas such as “separation of powers,” or sanquan fenli (三权分立).
“Teacher, Please Don’t Talk Like That About China: An Open Letter to Teachers of Philosophy and Social Science” Liaoning Daily
November 13, 2014
Beloved teachers, it is with hearts filled with reverence that we write this letter.
The position of university teacher is a position of honor, a very unique one. The university is a place where we are taught to be people, and it is at the university that our emotional backgrounds, our wats of thinking and even the principle values with which we view life are formed.
Comrade [Deng] Xiaoping once said that education faced in the direction of modernisation, faced the world and faced the future. University education is about seeking and examining the methods and paths by which China can modernise, about building a system of culture that it suited to the world’s most advanced trends. It is about bearing up the future of the Chinese people through the transfer of knowledge.
Because of the special nature of their profession, teachers are no longer ordinary, nor can they be ordinary. You are not those [gossipers] who pass judgment in the park. And you are certainly not those who like to stir up the water online by throwing bricks.
The content of two-hour lectures in the classroom can’t be likened to discussion about money over the bar table. Nor is it the same [errant] thing as a WeChat post. The university classroom is a place where questions are answered. You are people who are to transmit knowledge. What we want are people who teach.
When it comes to the question of raising problems, our pen slows, our hearts feel troubled.
This plan originated with a post made by a web user. In October this year, the Central Committee sent down its “Opinion Concerning the Further Strengthening and Reforming of Propaganda and Ideological Work at Universities Under the New Circumstances” (关于进一步加强和改进新形势下高校宣传思想工作的意见), which raised the issue of energetically raising the ideological and political character of teaching teams in higher education.
On October 21, the official WeChat account of Liaoning Daily started gathering submissions on the topic of, “How should China be in the university classroom?” More than 300 micro-stories (微故事) were received. A message from a university student named Kiko caught our attention. She said: “I don’t know when it started, when talking bad things about China and cursing our society became the rage. One teacher of ours who when he lectures can’t stop talking about ‘look at how it is overseas.’ When he uses case studies to teach, all of the negative examples are China.
If China is truly as dark as our teachers make it out to be, with what sort of attitude are we to face this society once we’ve graduated? Who will give us the confidence and strength to build this society of ours?”
What an important and realistic question!
For China to have become the classic case study for all things negative — is this an isolated instance, or something more widespread? We used new media to conduct a survey and found that 80 percent of university students said they had encountered teachers who were ‘fond of airing complaints’, and this “blackening” (描黑) of our country and society left students upset. This was especially noted in law, administrative management, economics and other areas of philosophy and the social sciences.
We felt we had to write this open letter so that our teachers could better consider questions like these: How should China be taught objectively and accurately in the classroom? How can students be taught all at once with expert knowledge and a bright attitude (光明的心态)? How, when answering major social issues, can we raise effective methods for solving these problems?
To research teachers’ problems, we decided to honestly serve as students for a time. Reporters from Liaoning Daily went off in all directions, entering more than 20 schools in five cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Shenyang. Over a period of two weeks, they listened to nearly one hundred expert classes.
Everyone was moved by the profound expert knowledge, serious scholarly attitude and sense of responsibility shown by the teachers. At the same time, however, the phenomenon of “being scornful of China” (呲必中国) existed to a definite degree, and in some cases this was quite excessive — deserving the attention and concern of the education world.
Organizing the close to 130,000 words of class notes we compiled, these include essentially three issues with “China in our university classrooms” (大学课堂上的中国).
The first issue is a lack of theoretical recognition [of CCP history and ideology]. Some teachers use mocking means to teach ideological theory courses, mentioning so-called Marx-Engels notions of “privacy”; making inappropriate comparisons between Mao Zedong and ancient dynasties, deconstructing history and making wanton evaluations; dismissing the theoretical innovations of the Chinese Communist Party, at every turn boiling the concrete problems of experience down into theoretical failure.
The second issue is a lack of political recognition (政治认同). Some teachers are wont to share their superficial “impressions from overseas study,” praising Western “separation of powers” and believing that China should take the Western path. Openly, they question the major policy decisions of the CCP’s Central Committee, or even speak directly against them. They one-sidedly exaggerate problems of corruption, social inequality, social management and other areas. They view problems occurring in the midst of development as deficiencies in our political DNA (政治基因缺陷).
The third issue is a lack of identification on an emotional level (情感认同). Some teachers turn their personal disappointments into complaints in the classroom, allowing the students to become unwitting “tribunals”; they use the remark, “I won’t enter the Party,” to show up their own supposed “backbone”; they accept doggerel and dark online stories as the final word and frighten students about their “sinister society,” inducing students to “blacken themselves for protection.”
When we approached teachers for their thoughts about this the general response — whether they were advisors, professors, lecturers or teaching assistants — was a clear: this is unacceptable! But some teachers responded like this:
“As for how I teach in the classroom, can you really intrude on my academic freedom?”
“Would I still have a class if we avoided talking about real problems? If we can’t face up to complaints, won’t our society be too weak?”
“The Party and government should hear the complaints of the masses . . . Otherwise, how can social pressures be relieved?”
Sure, ordinary folk can beg such questions. But, dear teachers, because your profession demands something higher of you, and because of the solemnity and particularity of the university classroom, please do not speak this way about China!
China in the university classroom should clear antecedents. Historical development is continuous, and no period is an isolated scene. Contemporary China’s political forms, social organisations, habitual concepts, all have been influenced by thousands of years of cultural tradition — and so, of necessity, it is imprinted with definite “Chinese characteristics.”
In assessing China, we can’t look just at the surface, but must look even more at the lines of its history.
During a press conference with US President Barack Obama on November 12, Xi Jinping was asked by New York Times reporter Mark Landler whether China would relax its restrictions on US journalists working in the country. He sidestepped the question, turning instead to a reporter for Chinese state media. But Xi eventually circled back to the question, suggesting foreign media were to blame for any problems they experienced in China.
“When a car fails on the road,” President Xi said, “perhaps we need to get out of the car and see where the problem is.”
The censored Weibo post from “vicissitude” simply reads:
Xi angrily throws down his earpiece and avoids answering a question from a New York Times reporter.
The original Chinese-language post follows:
习怒摔耳机拒绝回答纽约时报记者
The Weibo post also includes a jpg image of a Chinese-language news article on the press conference and Xi’s response from Sina Hong Kong.
The Beijing News, one of China’s leading professional newspapers, published an interview today with Hu Deping (胡德平), the son of former senior leader Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), whose death in 1989 prompted calls for a reassessment of his reform legacy that swelled into wider demonstrations. Hu Deping, a respected economist, is former deputy minister of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee (中央统战部).
The interview in The Beijing News, which deals with the Bo Xilai scandal and the need for political reform in China to check the power of vested interests that might stand in the way of continued reform, appears in a section on page ten called “Dialogue China” (对话中国).
At left, former senior CCP leader Hu Yaobang. At right, his eldest son, Hu Deping, whose interview on political reform appears in today’s The Beijing News.
Our translation of the Hu Deping interview follows:
Hu Deping: Special Interest Groups Are the Biggest Obstacle to Reform
November 13, 2014 Politics Safeguards the Results of Economic Reform The Beijing News: One year on from the 3rd Plenum of the 18th Central Committee, which raised the issue of “comprehensive reform” (全面改革), could you talk about your ideas about reform? Hu Deping: There was a period of time [recently], especially when Bo Xilai was in the midst of his “Singing Red and Striking Black” (唱红打黑) in Chongqing, when I felt truly terrified. Wang Lijun said publicly: If only political problems could be changed into legal questions and then be investigated, then we would have an absolute say (发言权). I once wrote a letter to the Central Committee saying that these words were quite terrifying. After that, I made my opinion known publicly, arguing that judicial work [in our country] was going wrong. After the 18th National Congress, the Central Committee talked about comprehensive reform, about punishing corruption, and rule of law started heading in a good direction . . . and my sense of terror started to abate. This time, the Central Committee raising the issue of comprehensively promoting rule of the nation according to law (依法治国), this is major progress. The Beijing News: The 4th Plenum has just passed. What most made an impression on you about this meeting?
Hu Deping: What most made an impression was that the Party talked about using rule of law to promote the modernization of the country’s governance system and governing capacity. This suits the real circumstances in China, and it also adopts the fruits of the development of human civilization. For example, the emphasis on the authority of the constitution, on checking public power, and protecting individual rights, etcetera. The Beijing News: The 3rd Plenum was about “comprehensive reform,” the 4th Plenum about “ruling the nation in accord with the law” (依法治国). What is the logical relationship between these two? Hu Deping: In terms of “comprehensive reform,” in the year to now a lot of reforms are being promoted in the economic sector, for example land reforms and financial reforms. Protecting the gains of economic reform requires rule of law. So there is a very close relationship between these two plenums in terms of economic foundations and [political] superstructures. The 4th Plenum talk about “ruling the nation in accord with the law” is about reforms to the superstructure. It means that political reform (政治体制改革) has already begun. The Beijing News: Do you think the 4th Plenum idea about “comprehensively promoting rule of the country in accord with the law” (全面推进依法治国) is a part of political reforms? Hu Deping: Of course. Advocating rule of law, and implementing checks on power, including the emphasis this time on legislation, on examination of unconstitutional [conduct] (违宪审查), on the Chinese Communist Party leading the way in abiding by the law — all of these are reforms in the political realm. Only With the Cooperation of the Political System Can We Exit the Deep End The Beijing News: What aspect do you believe is most important in the process of comprehensively deepening reforms? Hu Deping: Political reform and judicial system reforms (司法体制改革) are already growing more and more important. Comprehensive reform requires the mutual interaction of various sectors, so that the reform of various sectors advances all together, in step. Otherwise, the system won’t work smoothly, and the workability of reform at various levels will suffer, and then various local authorities will impede the ideas of the central leadership. That won’t work. The Beijing News: Looking back from 1978 to now, what can we says are the characteristics of the reforms we are pursuing right now? Hu Deping: At the outset of reforms in 1978, political reform and economic reform were very matched. Aside from reforms in the economic realm, at the time we advocated the liberation of ideas (思想解放), breaking through obstacles in our thinking, and we promoted the reform of the leadership of the Party and of the government. But for a long period of time after that, we talked a great deal about economic reform, but we talked very little about political reform.
I think right now we’ve come back to the place where reforms in various realms are matched comprehensively. If political reforms can come along, then the process of reform will move even more quickly – it won’t be always stuck at an impasse (攻坚阶段), always wasting time stuck in the deep end, where ‘the troops are fatigued from an overlong deployment’ (师老兵疲). The Beijing News: Do you think that up to this point the Central Committee of the CCP has already completed the top-level design of reform? Hu Deping: Reform and opening has proceeded for more than thirty years now, and its now entered a period of impasse, the deep end period, and continuing the top-level design of reform exactly means ruling the nation according to the law. Various different interest groups in our society need to be protected by the law. If tensions emerge, legal methods should be used to mediate these tensions. For example, if the gap between rich and poor is substantial, then certain types of taxation can be considered, and limitations can be considered for various unregulated actions in the market.
But the one thing that cannot be protected is the illicit combination of money and power, special interest groups of privilege than run roughshod over the interests of the people. This portion of people is stands in tension with the country and with the Party.
Hu Deping: For some time in the recent past, particularly during Bo Xilai’s “Singing Red and Striking Black” (唱红打黑) campaign in Chongqing, I found things quite terrifying. Wang Lijun said publicly: If only political problems could be changed into legal questions and then be investigated, then we would have an absolute say (发言权).
What do you get when you combine a mainland tour by a Taiwanese pop icon with a roomful of propaganda officials who want to put their own stamp on policy? You get, possibly, a catchy new buzzword for state controls on the news, arts and culture. As we saw last month at the Chinese Communist Party’s forum on arts and culture, President Xi Jinping is all about “positive energy” in media and culture. He told artists gathered at the event that works of art and literature “should be like sunshine, blue sky and the spring breeze, inspiring minds, warming hearts and cultivating taste.” Cultural creation, said Xi, should brim with “positive energy,” or zhengnengliang (正能量), which refers to positive and uplifting content and attitudes as opposed to critical and negative ones.
At the Chinese Communist Party’s session on arts and culture earlier this fall, President Xi Jinping (right) praised blogger Zhou Xiaoping (left) for spreading “positive energy” through his writing.
In the context of news control, “positive energy” is akin to another term favored under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, “emphasising positive news.”
While the full phrase, “transmitting positive energy to society” (传播社会正能量), is a relative newcomer to China’s information/culture control lexicon, its rise is unmistakable.
The following is a search of the full “positive energy” phrase in the WiseNews database, accounting for hundreds of Chinese newspapers. (“Positive energy,” or zhengnengliang (正能量), cannot be searched separately because it can be used very differently in other contexts.)
The upward trend of the term since the final months of 2012 and the start of the Xi Jinping administration suggests it is an important — if not yet definitively core — concept in news and propaganda work.
When we look at how local propaganda leaders are deploying their control discourse of late, we can see that the phrase is a crucial one. When, for example, the propaganda chief of the city of Hanzhong, in Shaanxi province, addressed a forum on November 6 to commemorate China’s official Journalist’s Day, he set “positive energy” right beside China’s reigning cardinal control term, “public opinion guidance“:
At the forum, speeches were given by representatives from various media in Hanzhong, talking about the results achieved over the past year. Hanzhong Party Committee Member and Propaganda Minister Xie Jingshuai (谢京帅) pointed out that media must have a correct grasp of public opinion guidance (准确把握好舆论导向), and transmit positive energy to society (传播社会正能量).
. . . .
Concerning future media development, Xie Jingshuai said he hoped that media could correctly grasp public opinion guidance, respect the facts, have a keen eye for discovering beautiful things (拥有发现美的敏锐眼光), have the courage to bear [their responsibilities], that they report beauty, spread beauty and transmit positive energy to society (报道美、传播美，传递社会正能量).
The commercial Huashang Newscovers Hanzhong propaganda leader’s remarks on “positive energy.”
Where did this idea of “transmitting positive energy to society” originate?
The official use of the term seems to go back to September 2012, when just 8 articles in the universe of mainland Chinese newspapers mentioned the term.
A September 4, 2012, article in Beijing Business Today (北京商报), carried on many internet news portals in China, bore the headline, “State Administration of Radio Film & Television: We Encourage the Making of TV Dramas with Positive Energy.”
This report was about a discussion forum in Beijing called “There is a Spirit Called the Beijing Spirit” that dealt with a TV drama called Beijing Youth (北京青年). At that event, Wang Danyan (王丹彦), deputy section head of the Propaganda Management Division of SARFT (now merged with the General Administration of Press and Publications), “gave her thumbs up to Beijing Youth and TV dramas like it that transmit positive energy to society.”
Interestingly, the only coverage using the term “transmitting positive energy to society” in the three years prior to the SARFT remarks on Beijing Youth can be found in three articles in July 2011 reporting on concerts in China by Taiwanese superstar Lo Ta-yu (罗大佑):
You can easily see Lo Ta-yu’s desire to use the concerts to transmit positive energy to society, and this is why he is still called ‘the godfather of Chinese pop.’
In the decade prior to that coverage, there is nothing anywhere in mainland news coverage about “transmitting positive energy to society.”
Lo is a widely recognised cultural icon in Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong — though his simple and melodic songs have sometimes contained social and political commentary, and in the 1980s there were bans on some of his songs in Taiwan and the PRC. [There is an interesting piece here, with English translation, about a Lo tune called “Orphan of Asia.”]
More recently, Lo sparked some controversy during Taiwan’s “Sunflower Movement” protests earlier this year, when he called student protesters “victims of mass hysteria.”
Was Lo Ta-yu’s 2011 mainland concert tour the inspiration for the emerging propaganda notion of “transmitting positive energy to society”? It’s difficult to say for sure. But it is certainly possible. After all, as propaganda officials know only too well, culture moves in mysterious ways.
【Conquest】At the APEC banquet, Putin drew his coat over the shoulders of [the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping] Peng Liyuan. When, right next to her, [US President] Obama saw this scene he exchanged pleasantries with Big Uncle Xi (习大大), at the same time casting a meaningful glance at Putin. At that moment, the three most powerful men in the world were all looking at one woman. Sometimes a few men can conquer the entire world, but they can never disrespect a beautiful woman. (This move of Putin’s was previously used on German Chancellor Angela Merkel).
As I wrote last week, the terms “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” (依宪治国) and “governing in accord with the constitution” (依宪执政) — which had for a time disappeared from China’s official discourse — reemerged in the “Decision” released by the recent 4th Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CCP.
On Thursday, November 6, 2014, Guangzhou Daily, the official Party paper of the Guangzhou city leadership, published an interview with Mr. Hu Yunteng (胡云腾), a member of the Judicial Committee of the Supreme People’s Court who took part in the drafting process of the plenum “Decision.”
In the interview, run on page 6 of the newspaper, Mr. Hu reveals that “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” and “governing in accord with the constitution” were “for a time taken out” of the “Decision.”
According to President Xi Jinping’s explanation of the plenum, the drafting process of the “Decision” went on for eight months. At the end of January 2014, the Central Committee of the CCP issued “Notice Soliciting Opinions Concerning the Question of the Party’s Comprehensive Promotion of Rule of Law” (关於对党的十八届四中全会研究全面推进依法治国问题徵求意见的通知). In mid-February, the drafting process for the “Decision” began in earnest. The drafting team (起草组) was divided into eight separate research groups (调研组) , which were dispatched to 14 cities and provinces for the purpose of research.
Hu Yunteng informs us:
Once the draft of the ‘Decision’ was complete, the opinions of 118 Central and regional departments were again sought, and the drafting group gave these opinions earnest consideration. Changes went back and forth for many of the opinions. For example, everyone paid a relatively substantial degree of attention to two phrases in the ‘Decision’: “Rule of the nation by law means, first and foremost, ruling the nation in accord with the constitution,” and, “The crux in governing by laws is to govern in accord with the constitution.” These two sentences were included in the original draft of the ‘Decision,’ and then some departments were of the view that much of the content already showed [these concepts], and so for a time these two phrases were taken out.
Mr. Hu does not reveal who he is referring to when he says “some departments.”
Judging from the time frame of the drafting process, we do know that the Central Propaganda Department was already putting together a collection of the president’s speeches called A Primer of Important Speeches by General Secretary Xi Jinping. That book, released in June this year, did not include Xi Jinping’s December 2012 speech on constitutionalism — the first time he had introduced the above-mentioned phrases under contention in the “Decision” drafting process.
Considering the timing, we can suppose that the initial removal of the constitution-related phrases from the draft “Decision” corresponded with the Central Propaganda Department’s eliding of Xi Jinping’s constitution anniversary speech in its published collection.
Here again is Hu Yunteng:
In the 8 months since the set up of the drafting team, we conducted in-depth research and investigation, canvassed widely for opinions, held topic-based debates and constantly discussed changes. During this process, there were three meetings of the Politburo Standing Committee and two of the Politburo for the express purpose of deliberation over the Decision.
When the tens of millions of copies of Xi Jinping collected speeches were distributed without his important remarks on the Constitution, this omission turned heads. On September 5, six weeks before the 4th Plenum was held, Xi Jinping finally mentioned his pair of constitution-related terms in a public speech. And yet, inexplicably, up to the opening of the Plenum, these terms had yet to make it back into the final draft of the “Decision.”
In his interview with the Guangzhou Daily, Hu Yunteng gives us a crucial detail: “In the discussion at the 4th Plenum, some leaders felt these two phrases should be included in the ‘Decision.’ And so, at mid-day on October 23, we members of the drafting team met to discuss whether or not to accept these opinions, and the final decision was to adopt them.”
We have no way of knowing for certain who those “some leaders” were. But October 23 was the very last day of the Plenum — so we can say that the terms “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” (依宪治国) and “governing in accord with the constitution” (依宪执政) were pulled off the bench in the final seconds of the game.
The topsy turvy journey of these two terms — the “constitutional roller-coaster,” as I called it last week — shows us again what a confusing and non-transparent process Chinese politics is.
Hu Yunteng’s interview now makes two things clear. First of all, it explains why the two constitution-related terms were given short shrift in the “Decision.” They were, after all, last-minute add-ons. Second, it now makes sense that just as the “Decision” was released, Party media scrambled to explain in no uncertain terms that the CCP’s rule according to the Constitution is something quite different from Western constitutionalism.
What a truly fascinating business this struggle over language is. Even more unusual, in the context of China’s secretive attitude toward internal decision-making, was the headline for Hu Yunteng’s Guangzhou interview as it was picked up by the likes of People’s Daily Online and Xinhua Online:
“Drafter of Full Text of the ‘Decision’: ‘Rule in Accord With the Constitution’ initially Taken Out.”
A single APEC meeting, and not just Beijing but now six other cities and provinces must stop work and suspend classes, all the ensure a spurious air quality for a few days. This is the sky-high cost. It really puzzles me. If getting this kind of air quality means the ordinary people pay the price, then I don’t want it!
The recent 4th Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party introduced a policy document with the long-winded title, Decision on Major Issues Concerning the Comprehensive Promotion of Rule of the Nation in Accord with the Law (关於全面推进依法治国若干问题的决定). One key takeaway of the “Decision” is the return of a pair of phrases that for some period of time had disappeared from official media coverage in China — “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” (依宪治国) and “governing in accord with the constitution” (依宪执政).
For some background on these terms, readers can turn to two pieces I posted back in September, “The Missing Speech” and “Xi’s Missing Terms Emerge Again.”
Introduced boldly early in Xi Jinping’s term in office, the idea of “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” has peaked, fallen and reemerged over the past two years. “Red Alert,” photo by Michel Filion available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.
On December 4, 2012, Xi Jinping made a speech in Beijing to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the promulgation and implementation of China’s constitution. This speech attracted a great deal of attention both inside and outside China. In the speech, Xi Jinping said: “Rule of the nation by law means, first and foremost, ruling the nation in accord with the constitution; the crux in governing by laws is to govern in accord with the constitution” (依法治国首先是依宪治国，依法执政关键是依宪执政).
For Xi Jinping to use the words “first and foremost” and “crux” in these remarks represented a marked departure from the language of his predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
But in 2013, in the midst of the “Seven Don’t Speaks” (七不讲) policy and a wave of anti-constitutionalism rhetoric, this pair of Xi Jinping terms disappeared from official discourse altogether. They even became, we could say, sensitive terms.
As I wrote in “The Missing Speech,” when the Central Propaganda Department published a book last summer called A Primer of Important Speeches by General Secretary Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping’s December 2012 speech on constitutionalism was unaccountably left out of the collection.
Finally, on September 5, 2013, in a speech to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the National People’s Congress, President Xi again used his two-part phrase: “Rule of the nation by law means, first and foremost, ruling the nation in accord with the constitution,” he said. “The crux in governing by laws is to govern in accord with the constitution.”
As Xi’s speech was reported in the official People’s Daily, the six-month disappearance of this political phrase was finally ended. However, the phrase went silent again immediately after the People’s Daily report, resurfacing only after the “communique” (公报) for the 4th Plenum was released in late October.
Searching for the pair of terms between December 2012 and October 2014 in three separate databases — the People’s Daily (PD coverage alone, full text); WiseNews (100+ mainland papers, full text and headline search); Baidu.com (covering all mainland news sites) — I arrived at the following results, which show a clear pattern across all three databases. The bottom two graphs are both for WiseNews, the headline search on the left and the full text search on the right.
In December 2012, soon after Xi Jinping came to power, the terms “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” and “governing in accord with the constitution” appeared in six separate articles in the People’s Daily. In October 2014, the terms appeared in 16 articles in the People’s Daily, all but one of these after October 20, telling us they were closely related to the 4th Plenum.
The WiseNews database tells us that in December 2012 there were a total of 126 articles in mainland Chinese newspapers mentioning the two terms somewhere in the full text. After a period of 21 months with no use of the terms whatsoever, they appear in 514 articles in October this year.
This roller coaster ride of official discourse is not without its reasons. Some friends of mine who observe political events in China will say that the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t match its words with deeds and so there’s no sense in paying attention to the way it deploys language. But I believe we can, if we observe China’s political discourse carefully, glimpse the drift, collision and upheaval of the tectonic plates of Chinese politics.
The discourse of the Chinese Communist Party can be divided into five categories I label as follows: “cosmetic language” (脂粉语), “body hair language” (皮毛语), “banner language” (旗帜语), “gate of life language” (命门语) and “pointing language” (要穴语).
The first two types, including the “cosmetic language” the Party uses to sing its own praises (“representing the interests of the masses,” etcetera) and the “body hair language” of rigid but mostly meaningless formalism (like talk of “socialist core values”), can be disregarded in terms of their significance in reading political affairs in China.
By contrast, “banner language” — terms like the “Three Represents” (三个代表) of Jiang Zemin — do merit our attention as markers of the legacies and perhaps agendas of top leaders. (Note that Xi Jinping’s “banner term” is still not clear, and the “Chinese dream” doesn’t quite fit the bill.)
Examples of “gate of life language” would include fundamental principles that the Party cannot and will not dispense with. Take, for example, the “Four Basic Principles” (四项基本原则), of which the core principle is the leadership of the CCP.
Finally, there are terms like “political system reforms” (政治体制改革) or “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” (依宪治国) which can be exceptionally sensitive directional pointers about where the Party intends to go, or how it intends to change. Behind the ebb and flow of this “pointing language” we can see the fierce tug-of-war of Chinese politics.
High and mighty advocacy of “constitutional rule” (依宪) certainly does not equal true love or acceptance of the Constitution or constitutionalism, but the erasure and denial of “constitutional rule” as reflected in the official discourse does offer conclusive proof that forces within the Chinese Communist Party are acting out their hatred of, and opposition to, this idea.
At the same time, both inside and outside the Chinese Communist Party, there are still forces in pursuit of constitutionalism and democracy. Of late, these forces are exceptionally weak — but they hang on still, holding still and making no sound.
When Xi Jinping first spoke of “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution”, the well-regarded journal Yanhuang Chunqiu (炎黄春秋), Southern Weekly and others grew somewhat bolder in their support. This was followed by a vicious wave of anti-constitutionalism that accounted for the dramatic disappearance of both of Xi Jinping’s terms, “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” (依宪治国) and “governing in accord with the constitution” (依宪执政).
The anti-constitutionalism wave did not by any means root out support for the idea of constitutionalism, and as soon as the curtain closed on the 4th Plenum a number of media rushed to do special reports on “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution.” The following are several examples.
The Beijing Times runs a bold headline on its front page (upper left) reading “Ruling the nation in accord with the constitution; Governing in accord with the constitution.” A large headline at City Commercial News (upper right) reads: “Ruling the nation in accord with the constitution; Governing in accord with the constitution: Officials that Interfere with the Law Will Be Held Responsible.”
I observed recently that a number of websites, particularly official websites, also did obvious coverage of Xi Jinping’s pair of constitution-related terms. People’s Daily Online and Xinhua Online both did summaries of “important sentences” summing up the 4th Plenum “Decision,” and in both cases the term “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” topped the list.
We must note, however, that the above newspapers and websites represent just one corner of China’s media. And these treatments we see fall somewhere on a spectrum between “directed action” (规定动作) – meaning they were demanded by certain Party interests – and “self action” (自选动作), meaning they were a matter of conscientious choice.
For the time being, we can say that “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” and “governing in accord with the constitution” have crawled out from the valley of the past almost two years. However, they have yet to become widely accepted “hot words” (热词) within the broader discourse sphere. Their longer-term survival and development is far from certain.
Looking at coverage in the official People’s Daily last month, we can see that neither constitution-related term appeared in a headline in the newspaper. At the same time, 122 articles in the People’s Daily last month used the term “ruling the nation in accord with the law” (依法治国), and in 36 of these instances this term appeared in the headline.
Looking at the broader universe of print media coverage in the WiseNews database, we find that the constitution-related terms appeared in just 26 articles, while the latter term, “ruling the nation in accord with the law,” appeared 591 times. And Baidu shows a similar gap, with 694 online articles using the constitution-related terms and 110,000 using “ruling the nation in accord with the law.” It seems, therefore, that the real “hot term” during the 4th Plenum was “ruling the nation in accord with the law” – leaving the constitution out in the cold.
“Ruling the nation in accord with the law” was the main topic of the recent 4th Plenum. As the text of the “Decision” said:
Rule of the nation by law means, first and foremost, steadfastly ruling the nation in accord with the constitution; the crux in governing by laws is to steadfastly govern in accord with the constitution” (坚持依法治国首先要坚持依宪治国，坚持依法执政首先要坚持依宪执政) – the idea being that abiding by the constitution is the crux of “ruling the nation in accord with the law.
But the very idea of the centrality of the constitution makes many within the Party nervous. And just as the communique from the 4th Plenum was released, an article appeared online with the headline, “‘Governing in Accord with the Law’ Cannot be Confused with Western Constitutionalism” (依宪执政与西方「宪政」不容混淆). The article set the rather subdued tone for understanding the notion of “governing in accord with the law.” A search on Baidu shows that 106 websites ran this particular article, which was clearly propagated under direct instruction from propaganda authorities.
The byline of the article, Guo Ping (国平), is not in fact a person, but the official nom de plume of the Information Office of the State Council.
