In recent days, a colorful and unusual phrase, “anxiety pill,” or ding xin wan (定心丸), has gotten a great deal of play both online and in official state media. The reason for the state media’s interest is no mystery – the phrase appeared in President Xi Jinping’s most recent remarks on private and state-run enterprises, […]
By this point most everyone has probably seen or read about the superbly abstruse “mind map” (image above) created by state media in China to isolate the strands of President Xi Jinping’s core ideological concept: “Xi Jinping Thought of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for the New Era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想). If this is truly a map of […]
In a report last week, The Paper, an online news site operated by the Shanghai United Media Group, revealed that Zhao Siyun (赵思运), a professor at the Communication University of Zhejiang serving as deputy director of the Academy of Literature, had been issued with a “severe internal-Party warning” (党内严重警告) for a speech he gave in […]
As the 40th anniversary of reform and opening approaches in China, we have seen the emergence online in September of quite a number of posts or speeches from various quarters expressing some level of opposition to reform and opening. On September 11, a post by Wu Xiaoping (吴小平), a finance expert and web entrepreneur, suggested […]
This week we had a range of Chinese media stories, including two debates happening online and in the news pages — one about a finance expert’s suggestion that China’s private sector should “yield” to the public sector in light of economic pressures and the need to concentrate national strength, and another about the authenticity of […]
In coverage — or lack of coverage — of the floods in Shandong province this week by traditional media outlets in China, we have further illustration of the changing nature of the media environment. No longer are magazines and newspapers pursuing in any way in-depth reports or analyses, as they might have done before the […]
During a high-level conference on propaganda and ideology held this week, President Xi Jinping held his ground, and seemed to reaffirm his confidence in Wang Huning, the top Party leader in charge of ideology. To help us understand the significance of Xi’s keynote speech at the event, I’ll focus first on two points of background […]
In recent days, the image above has been shared across social media in China, and it has caused considerable speculation and confusion. Is the man standing in the image President Xi Jinping? The answer, in fact, is NO. The image is not that of Xi Jinping, though it most definitely resembles China’s current leader. The […]
Over the past year, international media and human rights groups have reported actively on the deteriorating human rights situation in Xinjiang in China’s northwest, where unrelenting and virtually ubiquitous state surveillance using a range of technologies has become a fact of life for millions of ethnic Uyghurs. In one of the strongest reports, the Wall […]
In May 2018, Chen Yixin (陈一新), the secretary of China’s top political body overseeing law enforcement, rolled out what in the brittle-dry world of Chinese political discourse might amount to a memorable new catchphrase. Addressing a forum on propaganda, Chen spoke of the need for “6 grabs,” or liu ge zhua (六个抓), the idea being […]
