China’s leader maintained a commanding lead in the headlines of the CCP’s flagship People’s Daily in 2025, despite a substantial decline over the past year. What do these mixed signals mean?

As Chinese media publish annual New Year’s messages, the space for truth-telling continues to narrow in Xi Jinping’s China.

A poll from a government-run tabloid in China claims broad international embrace of Xi Jinping Thought. Something smells fishy.

Continuing its push to portray Xi’s “Four Great Global Initiatives” as a boon for a multipolar world, the CCP’s flagship newspaper features a headline mention of the quartet by an African parliamentarian.

With a crucial party plenum next week and the UN’s 80th anniversary approaching, a Qiushi article positions Xi’s four global initiatives as China’s blueprint for reordering the world.

Eight days, eight articles, eight assurances that China’s economy is thriving and everything is fine. When did confidence require this much convincing?

Despite recent speculation about challenges to his authority, China’s leader continues to dominate official party messaging with commanding leads over other top leaders.

Though China appears to embrace international “AI safety” concepts, key aspects of its approach remain fundamentally unsafe by the standards of democratic societies worldwide.

Despite speculation about Xi Jinping’s political troubles, our latest analysis reveals his continued dominance in Chinese state media, overshadowing all known potential rivals.

Despite speculation about the waning media presence of China’s top leader, our study of headlines in the People’s Daily suggests his dominance remains largely intact.

The country’s leadership has launched another round of anti-corruption campaigning. But its use of classic cases, personal shaming and action posing is a reminder that it is more interested in political theater and loyalty tests than in real institutional reform.

Over the weekend, a state-run newspaper used a coded byline to signal concern about local government waste. It was a reminder of how the internal communication of the Chinese Communist Party works through an opaque system of institutional pseudonyms.

As Taiwan’s new president took office, state media outlets in China were spitting fire. And nothing the new leader says or does, they write, can ever dampen the flames.

In recent months, the unexplained disappearance of high-level ministers in China has fueled speculation about unease within the halls of power. What does it mean when the leadership’s most vocal mouthpieces also fall silent?

Media reports in recent days have focussed concern over China’s plans for Taiwan, drawing on apparent changes in the political language used by senior PRC officials. But a more cool-headed look at the history of Taiwan talk suggests these changes are more of the same obscurity.

The latest targets in China’s ongoing — and seemingly never-ending — internet rectification campaign include content that “incites class antagonism.” How did a Communist Party that lived and breathed class struggle for decades get to this point?

With so much reporting and analysis to consume in the wake of the meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, we break down China’s response by focusing on the country’s most important front page.

Understanding the political messages of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) requires much more than mere summary and translation — and more even than close textual readings. Here’s a walk through the basics, looking at today’s edition of the Party’s flagship newspaper.

With the addition of a grandiose new buzzword in China for culture and civilization, it may seem that a towering future is on the horizon. We take a hard look at the foundations of “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture.”

During a dialogue with African nations last week, Xi Jinping declared that China will “forever be a member of the developing world.” Critics of China’s preferential treatment in the developed world will want to know exactly what he means.

The China-related agenda of the “Women for Peace” organization might be taken more seriously as a call for respectful dialogue and cooperation if its narratives were not so closely aligned with those of the Chinese party-state.

The visual treatment of reports in the official media on the appointment of Chinese ambassadors, and the acceptance of foreign ones, bears an important message about the imperial ambitions of China’s top leader.

Beijing says it has created “a new form of human civilization” for other countries to emulate, built around Xi Jinping’s theories. But what exactly is China talking about when it talks about civilization, and what will it mean for the world to be Xivilized?

China is signaling to the world that it is ready to be a responsible global leader and peacekeeper. But to play this role effectively and credibly, its leaders and media will need to stop talking in code.

CCP buzzwords are increasingly entering Hong Kong’s official vocabulary but are sometimes applied differently than in the mainland, suggesting a lack of understanding on the part of local officials.

The choice to use either CCP or CPC for China’s ruling Communist Party has become politically charged, but how did this distinction arise — and does it even matter?

A mention of Volodymyr Zelensky in China’s flagship newspaper this week, the first in many months, could be a faint foreshadowing of Xi Jinping’s planned call with the Ukrainian president. But it comes amid more resounding messages of deepening partnership between China and Russia.

Over the past two months, the CCP leadership has sought to downplay the problems stemming from its sudden decision to dismantle rigid Covid control measures, insisting that all is going according to plan. State media have actively pushed the narrative that this has all been a skillful re-tooling of existing policies.

An official commentary published yesterday in the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper is one of the more egregious efforts to date to present China’s handling of the pandemic over the past three years as evidence of strong global leadership.

In China, the death of an esteemed comrade is never strictly a private matter. For context on the passing of Jiang Zemin, CMP runs this piece from the 2017 archives — on the politics of the official funeral.

In a new buzzword emerging from the 20th National Congress of the CCP, Xi Jinping is front and center, and the whole world is encompassed by his visionary ideas.

The study of keywords can unlock the secrets stored away in the CCP’s bewildering official reports. But using the wrong terms only adds to the confusion.

In CMP’s latest 20th CCP Congress analysis, David Bandurski reviews some of the misunderstandings and pitfalls that arise from analyzing the keynote reports emerging every five years.

More important than all other matters of substance at the upcoming 20th National Congress of the CCP will be the question of how deeply the CCP commits to the dualism of Xi Jinping and his governing ideas as the formula for China’s future.

As China’s leadership persists in urging the necessity of rigid pandemic policies that have grown increasingly unpopular, it has borrowed a popular online meme and made it the object of righteous scorn.

The CCP has long viewed science as both a crucial contributor to national development and as closely interwoven with political claims to truth as a source of political power. New rules for “science popularization” released over the weekend make this history painfully present.

In late August one of the key buzzwords signaling Xi Jinping’s unassailable position at the top of the Chinese Communist Party seemed to be headed downhill. But there are signs that a rapid ascent is in store for the coming weeks, leading up to the 20th National Congress in October.

The “Two Establishes,” a key buzzword to signal Xi Jinping’s power and prestige within the Chinese Communist Party, had a stellar start in August. But it has rapidly lost its shine. What does this mean for the crucial CCP congress that lies ahead?

Now is the time to watch the key catchphrases of the Chinese Communist Party to see who is up and who is down — and what this might say about deliberations behind closed doors ahead of the 20th National Congress. One phrase has been oddly absent over the past week.

One of the key Xi Jinping power phrases to watch in the weeks ahead of the CCP’s 20th National Congress is the “Two Establishes.” The term is trending red hot right now in the People’s Daily.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is headline news all over the world today, and China has voiced its “strong condemnation.” So why is the story pushed into fifth place on the front page of the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper?

Loyalty signaling at the most senior levels of the CCP fired up further this week with words of ardent love for the general secretary from Zhejiang’s top leader, an aerospace engineer.

A historical look at the internal system of not-so-secret codes by which those in positions of power in China can make their views known through the official media system.

Efforts to justify harsh Covid lockdown policies that have created a great deal of short-term pain for average Chinese have taken Xi’s defenders back to the ideas of the general secretary’s favorite forebear, Mao Zedong.

As the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party approaches, the race is on behind closed doors to secure Xi Jinping’s power with near religious devotion. In recent days there have been faint twists of development in the pages of official Party media.

In amongst the commemorative articles that came with the 14th anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake last month, there were a handful looking back on what the disaster meant for China’s journalists. Owing to a combination of factors, the vast majority of those who reported on the quake in 2008 have moved on from journalism entirely — and reporting on disaster stories has suffered.

Apparent inconsistencies in messaging within China’s leadership raise questions about possible differences over the exact nature of the challenges facing the country — and how to tackle them.

China’s state-run media are commemorating the second anniversary today of the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Not, mind you, out of genuine concern for the safety and well-being of Black Americans — but to distract from questions over its human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Speculation has been rife this week that Xi Jinping’s absence from the front page of the Party’s flagship newspaper signals his weakening position. But how much stock should we place in such absences?

Xi Jinping’s speech to mark the centenary of the Chinese Communist Youth League this week was meant to inspire a generation’s dedication to the ruling Party — but also to shape the dominant view of history in favor of the general secretary’s continued power.

Yesterday’s meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP was a powerful affirmation of current policies on covid prevention — despite dramatic recent failings in Shanghai. CMP takes a quick look at the language of the meeting readout.

As Xi Jinping has signaled that he will permit no compromise on China’s “dynamic zero” covid policy, despite the dramatic failures evident in the city of Shanghai, an old revolutionary phrase has come to signal his resolve.

With the 20th National Congress of the CCP just months away, expressions of loyalty, or biaotai (表态), are on the rise. Local leaders are eager to signal their obedience to Xi Jinping and his rule of the Party.

As the 20th National Congress of the CCP draws nearer, we can anticipate the creation of new catchphrases to talk about the Party’s glorious leader and his visionary leadership. The past week has not disappointed. We give you Xi Jinping, “pilot of the great revival” (伟大复兴领航人).

As horrific images and eyewitness accounts emerge of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, the flagship publication of the Chinese Communist Party focusses away from these brutal facts, centering attention on the supposed financial atrocities committed by the United States.

While for much of the world the conflict in Ukraine is “Russia’s war,” Chinese media have opted for other terms, including “special military operation.” In this closer look at Chinese media coverage, we document this official framing — but also find some surprising and encouraging exceptions.

Three months after the US-led Summit for Democracy, it is clear that the re-framing of the global discourse on democracy is a long-term strategy for the Chinese Communist Party, which hopes to shift the focus from rights-based participation to results-driven government trust. With reference to Western opinion surveys, the Chinese media and diplomats are claiming the results are already in.

A high-level directive issued by Xi Jinping on the Omicron outbreak in Hong Kong has been headline news inside the special administrative region. But one mystery is why it has not been reported at all inside mainland China.

The Chinese Communist Party’s obsession with number-based catchphrases can be exacting for the outside observer. But this year matters can be simplified by focusing on just two crucial catchphrases: the “Two Establishes” and the “Two Safeguards.” These boil down to one simple message: Xi Jinping will continue leading China beyond 2022.

China’s top agency for the control and regulation of cyberspace has released its list of top keywords for 2021. These are children only a controlling parent could love.

For the past five years the “Four Confidences” formula affirming the strengths of CCP rule has been firmly in place, finally added to the Party Charter in 2017. But the so-called “confidence doctrine” now looks to be upgraded with a fifth addition — “historical confidence.”