The Chinese leadership sees transparency as important to promote state legitimacy. But it treats it as a matter of discipline and top-down supervision, rather than as a question of press freedom and citizen participation. The right to “open government information” (政府信息公开) is recognised in law, but may not infringe upon the interests of the Party State.
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.
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.
The term “main melody,” or zhu xuanlü (主旋律), is frequently found in contemporary Chinese Communist Party discourse to describe activity in the cultural sphere, including media and journalism, that sticks to the main political line of the CCP. Emerging in the 1980s to refer to developments in film, the phrase can now refer more generally to the need to ensure the Party’s voice is dominant in media and the arts, and leads the chorus.
Published days ahead of its centennial, the official chronicle of the history of the Chinese Communist Party offers a revealing glimpse into how the current leadership would like to remember, and forget, the past.
Wang Huning is now the most defining figure of Xi era political theory, the creator of political formulas that defend centralized power and charismatic politics. But an article Wang penned almost 40 years ago reads today like dissent against this “new era” orthodoxy.
Though hardly a surprise, news today that the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress has passed a sweeping national security law for Hong Kong, the exact text of which has still not been made public, has rattled nerves. Anticipating the law, the Hong Kong government has in recent days sought to reassure businesses and […]
For 2018, we could say that the most important testing point (测试点) in China’s political discourse arena was the contraction of President Xi Jinping’s political “banner term,” or qizhiyu (旗帜语), “Xi Jinping Thought of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (习近平中国特色社会主义思想), which was formally introduced at the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist […]
China has a serious problem with inflation. No, I’m not talking about inflationary pressures on the economy, though those numbers have been up. I’m talking about inflation of the national ego. The country, encouraged by relentless state propaganda, has grown full of itself — and this may dangerously diminish its basic capacity for self-reflection. This, […]
“To err is human,” Deng Yuwen, the former editor of Study Times, wrote in the South China Morning Post today. “And a leader who tolerates no checks on his power is even more likely to err, because power can make one arrogant and impervious to other views.” As the National People’s Congress opens tomorrow, one […]