China’s feared graft-buster, Wang Qishan (王岐山), vacated his post as head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection at last month’s 19th National Congress, despite speculation he might be kept on beyond the unofficial retirement age of 68 to continue leading President Xi Jinping’s aggressive anti-corruption drive. But Wang isn’t out of the picture just […]
As media across China today reported the close of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the political event at which President Xi Jinping spoke of the glorious future of a “modern socialist nation,” the country’s Party-run newspapers seemed to careen into the past. With a visual prominence redolent of the pre-reform era, […]
The following preliminary observations on the political report to the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party of China were offered by an expert on Chinese politics who wished not to be identified by their real name. The piece is published under the penname Wu Bing (吴冰). We offer only a partial translation of Wu’s […]
When you are the leader of a political party that has unchallenged rule over a powerful authoritarian state, it’s your prerogative, for better or worse, to decide what is and isn’t history. On day three of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, we can read just about everywhere in China’s official state […]
Building on yesterday’s reading of Xi Jinping’s political report to the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, we can add the following observations. We will continue to update our readers as we note points of significance in the hefty document: 4. The tifa, [the Party must] “act within the scope of the law” […]
Xi Jinping’s first political report, delivered today at the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, is a monster that must be carefully dissected through many painful hours of reading — turning it constantly against the mirror of political reports past. So we do not presume to offer a reading here. […]
From the outset of his first term as general secretary in late 2012, state media in China made much of Xi Jinping’s down-to-earth style. The new leader, we were told, had demanded less jargon of his fellow officials, and had poo-pooed public speeches burdened with boilerplate. The China Daily, published by the Information Office of the State Council, […]
The 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is just around the corner — and that means the machine of political discourse is humming away at high speed.
For months, observers of China’s political terrain have speculated on what phrase will come to symbolize the Chinese president’s rise to paramount leader status. We might now have our answer.
Read the dizzying jargon the Party uses to talk about its decades-long battle against jargon — and you know exactly where the problem lies.