From their very first days in the classroom, this generation of children were taught to shout, “Long live Mao Zedong!” Steeped in the politics of class struggle, many of these youth also became red guards mobilized at the outset of the Cultural Revolution. In a report ahead of the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2011, Guangzhou’s Yangcheng Evening News reported that at least 30 prominent people might be characterized as “second-generation reds” – including Zhou Binghe (周秉和), the nephew of Zhou Enlai (周恩来), the first premier of the People’s Republic of China and Hu Deping (胡德平), the son of former premier Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦). However, the term can be applied to any son or daughter of a Party leader, local or national, serving before or during the Cultural Revolution.

While the term, which emerged in the 1990s, has been used more readily online, it is rarely ever found in the traditional Party media. It has appeared just twice in the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper (to March 2021), both times in the Xi era. The first was an article on July 25, 2016, written by Zhang Fu (章夫), a member of the All-China Writers Association. In it, Zhang said: “Last November, I went with writer Gao Hong to visit the descendants of the Red Army in Zoige County, and I was lucky enough to meet a ‘second-generation red’ from Yilong during the interview.”

In an article in the paper just a few days later, He Jiesheng (贺捷生), PLA general and the daughter of revolutionary and commander He Long (贺龙), wrote in the paper: “When I arrived in Chengdu, I was greeted by such second-generation reds as the daughters of my cousin, [Red Army commander] He Wendai (贺文岱) — He Nanan (贺南南), He Jinnan (贺锦南) and He Rongnan (贺蓉南) — and also the sons of my father’s favourite general He Bingyan (贺炳炎), He Leisheng (贺雷生) and He Lingsheng (贺陵生), and many other third-generation reds whose names I could and couldn’t say. All were smiling.”

The following is an excerpt from “Major Events,” an item appearing in China Comment, a magazine published internally by the Central Propaganda Department:

In the afternoon, Zhao Ziyang speaks with officials from the Propaganda Bureau and others responsible for the ideological work of the Party. “Open things up just a bit. Make the news a bit more open. There’s no big danger in that,” he says, adding. “By facing the wishes of the people, by facing the tide of global progress, we can only make things better.” Once Zhao’s words are conveyed to news media through comrades Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen, support for the student movement rapidly seizes public opinion and wrongly pushes matters in the direction of chaos. Several large newspapers, television and broadcast stations in the capital offer constant coverage of the students’ wishes. Subsequently, movements nationwide begin to gather strength, and the numbers of participants swell. Headlines and slogans attacking and deriding the Party also multiply in papers of all sizes, the content becoming more and more reactionary in nature.

China Comment (半月谈), June 1989

In a series of dictates following the events of June 4, the Central Propaganda Department stated in no uncertain terms that news media must “uphold correct guidance of public opinion.” During 1994’s National Working Conference on Propaganda Thought, propaganda officials said the press must “arm the people with scientific principles, guide the people with correct public opinion, mould the people with a noble spirit, and invigorate the people with excellent works”. “The political tumult of 1989, and the severe missteps in the leading of public opinion taught everyone in the Party an important lesson,” Jiang Zemin said in a meeting with propaganda ministers on January 24, 1996.

In a speech on September 26 of the same year, Jiang Zemin said after paying an inspection visit to the People’s Daily that correct guidance of public opinion was good for both the Party and the people, and incorrect guidance potentially calamitous for both. Jiang emphasized that “control of news and public opinion had to be placed firmly in the hands of those who had a deep respect for Marxism, for the Party and for the people.” “Those units responsible for news and public opinion must place firm and correct political bearings above all other priorities,” he said, “thereby upholding correct guidance of public opinion.”

The particular aspects of “guidance of public opinion” have generally been defined as follows: 1. Major Party media must not print or broadcast content that in policy or spirit is at odds with the Party; 2. Media should actively promote the policies of the Party and facilitate public understanding of these policies; 3. If public opinion differs from the Party on any matters, the media are responsible for sufficiently guiding the public so as to bring their opinions in line with the Party spirit; 4. If news reports or propaganda appear concealing certain trends at odds with the aims of the Party, the media must act to prevent the possible spread of these trends; 5. News that is not in the interest of the Party must be rejected, and media must not be so bold as to publicize such news; 6. The media must ensure correct and unerring guidance of public opinion by thoroughly respecting the Party’s discipline of propaganda; 7. The media must provide journalists with a foundation of expert knowledge and research in propaganda techniques in order to improve the results of propaganda guidance.

Guidance Today

“Guidance of public opinion” is still routinely found in CCP guidelines today, and increasingly under Xi Jinping has found its way also into national laws relating broadly to the media. In his February 2016 speech outlining his media policy, Xi reiterated that media needed to “firmly adhere to correct guidance of public opinion” (牢牢坚持正确舆论导向). In the same speech he stressed that media operated by the Party-state must all be “surnamed Party” (姓党), upholding the ‘Party nature”(党性).

As digital transformation has re-defined the media landscape in China, however, adhering to “correct guidance of public opinion” is no longer strictly a matter for traditional media and its editors, managers and (licensed) journalists. As hundreds of millions of internet users are actively involved in the sharing and creation of content, including chats, they are all, for the CCP, important nodes of “guidance.”

Regulations released in September 2017 by the Cyberspace Administration of China on the management of chat groups on social media services such as WeChat, QQ and Baidu Post Bar specified (emphasis added) that “providers of information services through internet chat groups on the internet, and users, must adhere to correct guidance, promoting socialist core values, fostering a positive and healthy online culture, and protecting a favorable online ecology.”

In the weeks following a speech on ideology given by Chinese President Xi Jinping in August 2013, a new hardline term emerged to characterize the CCP’s bid for dominance over public opinion. That term, “public opinion struggle,” or yulun douzheng (舆论斗争), had hardline leftist overtones, and seemed to hearken back to an earlier era of Party rule. A series of strongly worded editorials in August spoke of the dangers posed to Party rule by such ideas as constitutionalism. As mainstream Party media, including the People’s Daily, formally joined the attack in September, many officials used militaristic metaphors to describe the Party’s “struggle” for ideological dominance. Arguments were no longer just arguments, but “value bombs” contending against one another in a life-or-death “struggle.”

Emerging in the 2000s as a term preferred by internet users to refer to corrupt officials who had already located their family members overseas, “naked official” began entering the more formal media discourse of anti-corruption in 2010. On February 22, 2010, the Ministry of Supervision issued a document called “Highlights of the Work of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2010” (国家预防腐败局2010年工作要点), the first government document to make supervision of so-called “naked officials” a priority.

On March 5, 2011, Ma Ma (马馼), deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said China would begin a registry for “naked officials” that year. In a media interview in 2016, Ma stressed that, “I personally believe that under reform and opening officials and citizens are the same, and sending sons and daughters overseas should not be a special right officials have.” Asked to estimate how many “naked officials” there were in China, Ma said: “I’m afraid we can’t arrive at these numbers right now.”

In 2017, the profile of the term “naked official” was further raised as it appeared in the Chinese TV drama “In the Name of the People” (人民的名义), a series based on the online novel written by Zhou Meisen (周梅森) that tells the story of a prosecutor who works to uncover corruption in a fictional Chinese city.

Internet controls in China are now handled primarily through the powerful Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), created in 2014 as the umbrella organization concentrating and overseeing cybersecurity and internet policy under the Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization, directly under the leadership of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping. In 2018, the leading group was formally upgraded to a commission, called the Central Commission for Cybersecurity and Informatization.
Before the Xi era, internet controls involved a dizzying array of party and government bodies, notably the Information Office of the State Council (SCIO), the office established in January 1991 as China faced international sanctions in the wake of the June 4, 1989, crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. The role of the office was to “explain China to foreign countries,” and the centering of internet policy there in the late 1990s demonstrates how the internet was seen as something foreign and external. By the 2000s, the Information Office was the most active agent of controls for the internet, its Internet Affairs Office regularly sending out directives to online news sites about sensitive content.
It was sometime in the late 2000s that the term “Ministry of Truth” emerged among Chinese internet users as Chinese neologism to describe the system of controls on internet content. The term is a reference to the department described in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where speech is subjected to all-encompassing control by Big Brother, the totalitarian leader of the fictional Oceania. The term has often been trucked out by Chinese journalists and internet writers since the late 2000s to refer collectively to the various agencies involved in propaganda controls.

On January 11 this year, dissident Chinese writer Yu Jie (余杰) arrived in the United States with his wife and family for a self-imposed exile. At a press conference in Washington DC on January 18, Yu said he had been seriously beaten in 2010, the year he released his book China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao (《中国影帝温家宝》), which was highly critical of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (温家宝) and China’s government. At the press conference, Yu described how plainclothes security police had stripped him naked and subjected him to abuse. Yu said the men threatened him by saying: “If the order comes from above, we can dig a pit to bury you alive in half an hour, and no one on earth would know.”
In the weeks that followed Yu Jie’s press conference in the United States, his words were shared inside China through social media platforms such as Sina Weibo, and a new online catchphrase was born: “buried alive.”
For many social media users, the term has now become synonymous with courage of conviction — and with the unfortunate consequences such conviction can bring in a society that does not tolerate dissent. The term can also refer to acts of courage and dissent in speech.
Chinese novelist Ah Ding (阿丁), who resides overseas, wrote on Sina Weibo on January 19, the day after Yu’s Washington press conference”Happy New Year! May you make the bury alive list!”

On February 1, the official Weibo of Caijing magazine reported a Xinhua News Agency story about Premier Wen Jiabao encouraging the people to criticize the government. One user responded: “Of course after everyone’s voiced their criticism they will all be buried alive.”