The following deleted weibo were selected by CDT Chinese editors from FreeWeibo.

Shen Jilan in 1953. (Xinhua)

慕容雪村: The Global Times claims that the assault on Shen Jilan does not contribute to Chinese political culture. They probably want people to disregard, even tolerate, the “Shen Jilan phenomenon.” In reality, it is precisely due to the discourse around Shen Jilan that more people are beginning to understand the basic propositions of the representative system of government: What kind of person is qualified to be a representative? What are the procedures and steps involved in becoming a representative? What makes a quality representative? If we can’t even discuss these, how can we begin to discuss political culture?

环球时报说攻击申纪兰无助于中国的政治文明，大概是希望人们无视、甚至包容“申纪兰现象”。事实上，正是通过对申纪兰现象的讨论，才让更多人明白了代议制的 几个基本命题：什么样的人才有资格当代表？当代表要经过哪些程序、哪些步骤？怎样才算是合格的代表？假如这些都不能讨论，那还谈什么政治文明？

Shen Jilan is the longest-serving representative of the National People’s Congress. She claims she owes her tenure to casting only “yes” votes. Writer Murong Xuecun has been punished for his social media outspokenness: every one of his microblog (weibo) accounts were deleted in May.

荣剑2013: They got themselves off the ground on two poles—the gun and the pen. That’s why they always say they are occupying the battleground of public opinion. When General Luo Yuan started using Weibo, he went about microblogging with that same attitude. He spoke about a zero-sum game: whatever we don’t occupy, they will. It’s the same old class warfare mentality, in which different opinions are perceived as unorthodox. Their scope grows until the people are made into the enemy. The real objective behind regulating freedom of expression is to keep the people in the dark. The essence of the two poles is violence and deceit.

他 们是依靠两杆子起家的，枪杆子和笔杆子，所以他们老是说要占领舆论阵地。罗援将军开微博，也是这个腔调，什么我们不占领，他们就要占领，一副你死我活的样 子。这依旧还是阶级斗争思维，视不同意见为异端，进而扩大化，视人民为敌。控制言论自由，目的是实行愚民政策，两杆子的实质是暴力和欺骗。

摆古论今: When Deng Xiaoping visited the United States in 1979, then U.S. president Jimmy Carter criticized China’s one-child policy as an assault on human rights. In response, Deng replied, “Would you like us to give you several million people every year then?” Upon hearing this, Carter was silent. (from the widely-circulated Chinese version) The American version: Upon hearing Deng’s suggestion, Carter burst into laughter and said, “It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a country’s leader treat their citizens as commodities that can be bought and sold.” Upon hearing this, Deng was silent. (from Carter’s memoir) Pass it on.

1979 年邓小平访美，时任美国总统卡特批评中国计划生育不讲人权，邓小平说：“那我们每年给你几千万人，如何？” 卡特听后，沉默了（广为流传的中国版本）。美国版本：卡特总统听完邓的话后哈哈大笑地说：“我还是第一次看到一个国家的领导人，把国民当物品送来送去。” 邓听后沉默了（卡特的回忆录）转

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Wen Xin Liu.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Deng Xiaoping, Global Times, Internet censorship, Jimmy Carter, Luo Yuan, Ministry of Truth, Murong Xuecun, National People's Congress, one-child policy, River Crab Archive, Shen Jilan, weibo
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Want more? Check out CDT Chinese’s Sunday series, Empire Illustrated (图说天朝).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, chengguan, Chinese Dream, Deng Xiaoping, Drawing the News, Edward Snowden, political cartoons, political humor, Shaanxi, Xi Jinping, yenan
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Children’s Day at Tiananmen, June 1, 1989.

In partnership with the China Copyright and Media blog, “Propaganda Past” is now featured in our Censorship Vault series. All translations in this series are by Rogier Creemers.

New series: Propaganda Past

One of my ongoing projects is a book on the history of Chinese media regulation. When working on this, I recently came across a collection of CCP propaganda departments, dating from the early beginnings of the CCP until the mid-Nineties. Some of the documents in this collection are public, but a good number of them were for internal circulation and are, so far, not available in the public sphere. I have decided to translate the most interesting of the documents and publish them here with comments. I expect that new posts will be added to this series on a biweekly basis.

To kick off the series, I translated two speeches from around this time, 24 years ago. The first one was given by Peng Zhen, the retired head of the Central Political-Legal Committee, and addressed the question of how to bring unity through abiding by the Constitution and the law. On the student protest, he found that

The motivations for these student demonstrations are good, pure, kind and constructive, the objective is to overcome flaws and mistakes in work, and to run State affairs and the Socialist system even better, this is consistent with our requirements. But the methods and means that they have adopted is not very appropriate. This is not the fault of the children. First, they do not know the law or don’t know it well. Second, they lack political experience, and are insufficiently on guard against the treacherous intentions of an extremely, extremely small number of conspirators and evildoers who seize the opportunity to cause turmoil.

His subsequent analysis about how the Constitution and the law did not allow for such protests, is interesting in the light of the ongoing debate about constitutionalism at the moment. Much of the language used is very similar.

Article 1 of the Constitution provides that the People’s Republic of China is led by the working class, not that it is led by the bourgeoisie, and not that the working class and the bourgeoisie jointly lead and divide all under heaven between them; that it is based on the alliance between workers and peasants, not on the basis of any other class or stratum; that it is a people’s democratic dictatorship, not a bourgeois dictatorship, and certainly not a landlord class dictatorship; that it is a Socialist country, and isn’t a capitalist country. The movement to do bourgeois liberalization in our country violates the Constitution, and violates the fundamental interests of the people of all ethnicities in the entire country and the standpoints of the Party.

Read the complete speech here: Use the Constitution and the Law to Unify Thoughts.

The second speech was made by Deng Xiaoping, on 9 June. This speech takes stock of the events in Beijing, and much attention is paid to the harm suffered by the armed forces.

During the suppression of this riot, so many of our comrades have been wounded, and even sacrificed themselves, their arms have also been stolen, why is this? It is also because good people and bad people have become confused, resulting in the fact that it was difficult to take on some drastic measures that should have been adopted. Dealing with this incident was a grim political trial for our Army, practice proves that our Liberation Army has passed the examination, if tanks had been used to press their way through, it might have created an ignorance of right and wrong around the entire country. Therefore, I must thank the PLA officers and men that they used this attitude to deal with the riots and incidents. Even though the losses makes one feel heartbroken, they may win the people, and make people not clearly knowing right and wrong change their viewpoint. Let everyone see, what kind of people the PLA actually are.

It is interesting as it outlines the primary building blocks for the political and economic consensus in the Nineties. It does so by re-establishing the necessity the basic policy of “One Centre, Two Basic Points”. The one centre here refers to the central position of economic development, the two basic points consist of the Four Cardinal Principles on the one hand and reform and opening up on the other. Deng also reiterates his objective of becoming a “middle-level developed country” by the 2040s. The mistakes that were made, according to Deng, were in the field of education.

Since founding the nation, we have always put the emphasis on arduous creation, in later days, when matters became a bit better, we advocated high consumption, consequently, the phenomenon of waste spread in all areas, adding to this a weakening in ideological and political work, the fact that the legal system is not complete, the phenomena of violation of law and discipline, corruption, etc., they all came out. I said to foreigners that the biggest mistake of the decade was education, here, I mainly talk about ideological and political education, I don’t purely talk about schools and young students, we also lack education for the people. There is little education concerning arduous creation, concerning what kind of country China is, and what kind of country we must change it into. This is a very big mistake of ours.

Lastly, Deng warns against the influence of the West, indicating that

in the area of political structural reform, there is one point that can be confirmed, which is that we must persist in implementing the People’s Congress system, and we cannot adopt a US-style tripartite separation of power structure. In fact, Western countries also not all implement the system of a tripartite separation of powers. The US scold us for suppressing the students, but in their dealing with domestic campus uprisings and riots, did they also not send the police and the military, did they also not arrest people and shed blood? They suppress students and the people, and we have suppressed a counterrevolutionary riot. Which qualifications do they have to criticize us!

Read the complete speech here: Speech when Receiving the Capital Martial Law Army Troop-Level or Higher Cadres

The next post in Propaganda Past will go back forty years, from 1989 to 1949. [Source]

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, censorship, Censorship Vault, constitution, Deng Xiaoping, media, media censorship, Peng Zhen, People's Liberation Army, propaganda, Propaganda Past
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“Development is the only hard truth,” Deng claimed. “If we do not develop, then we will be bullied.” Speaking of the “China Dream,” the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, upholds the same imperatives of national unity, strength and pride against the need for broad democratic reforms.

And he may be right to think he has a receptive audience. Soothsayers have been predicting the collapse of the Chinese regime for decades. In recent years, they have transferred their hopes onto the main beneficiaries of China’s economic growth: the middle classes. Last year’s leadership transition generated much wild talk about imminent revolution.

But China’s middle classes seem too fragmented to mount an effective political movement, let alone spark a revolution. And to many Chinese left behind by economic growth, the remote apparatchiks in Beijing may appear more committed to their welfare than an affluent minority devoted to further self-enrichment. [Source]

While Mishra addresses the link between economic growth and political liberalization, Martin King Whyte recently questioned the relationship between economic equality and political stability, arguing that the uneven distribution of power, not wealth, is the most likely source of unrest in China.

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Post tags: Chinese Dream, democracy, Deng Xiaoping, development, economic growth, liberalism, liberals, middle class, political reform, Xi Jinping
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Artillery in Beijing, May 9. (Weibo)

• Anhui girl (安徽女子): Yuan Liya, a poor young woman from central Anhui Province, died on May 3 after falling from the fourth floor of the wholesale apparel mall in Beijing where she worked. While the police have called it a suicide, Yuan’s family and fellow Anhui migrants suspect mall security guards raped her, and that she either jumped to escape them or was thrown off the building by her assailants. Hundreds protested in Beijing yesterday to demand a thorough investigation of Yuan’s case, drawing riot police onto the streets and rarely-seen helicopters into the air.

Deng Xiaoping’s Only Grandson Becomes County Head: Deng Zhuodi has become head of Pingguo County in the southwestern province of Guangxi. Some netizens suspect the younger Deng is a U.S. citizen. A graduate of the Duke University School of Law, Deng was accused of sexually harassing a female colleague in 2011. South China Morning Post, however, says Deng resurfaced in Chinese public life in 2010. Challenges to his citizenship are equally unsubstantiated.

• Deng Zhuodi+U.S. (邓卓棣+美国)
• Deng Zhuodi+sexual harassment (邓卓棣+性骚扰)
• Deng Zhuodi+red third generation (邓卓棣+红三代)

All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

Browse all of CDT’s collected sensitive words in this bilingual Google spreadsheet.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

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Post tags: Anhui, Beijing, censorship, Deng Xiaoping, Deng Zhuodi, Guangxi, Internet censorship, Ministry of Truth, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Yuan Liya
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Keywords that dominated posts on Chinese blogs included positive words such as “historic”, “wise” and “great, according to data compiled by the social media consultancy Meltwater. More than 130 comments on her passing appeared on Sina Weibo every minute in the first three hours after news of her death broke.

[…] “You don’t have to worry about China, because China will not provide any new ideas to the world – not in the next few decades or century,” Hangzhou-based lawyer Yuan Yulai said quoting Thatcher in a reaction that has since been shared 7,500 times.

Kai-fu Lee, the former head of Google China and one of the most influential voices on Weibo, shared the historic picture of her and Chinese counterpart Zhao Ziyang signing the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, the bilateral treaty which secured the July 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.

“Thatcher and who?” the IT-investor and prominent commentator Charles Xue quipped, when re-sharing the photo. Searches for Zhao Ziyang, who was purged in 1989 for siding with protestors at Tiananmen Square, are still blocked in China.

At China Real Time Report, Lilian Lin explained the place of the Hong Kong negotiations in Chinese memories

Many in China know her best for her stumble outside the Great Hall of the People in 1982 during a state visit. That stumble served as a metaphor for Ms. Thatcher’s visit, which marked a rare foreign-policy setback for a leader who took on both Argentina and the former Soviet Union. Bent on pressing for continued British sovereignty for Hong Kong, she met firm resistance from Deng. Records suggest their negotiations were less than pleasant. The Daily Telegraph quoted Deng as muttering to an aide: “I cannot talk to that woman, she is utterly unreasonable.”

“The Chinese public had a very complicated mentality towards this negotiation and frictions of the two parties, “ said Wang Yizhou, professor of School of International Studies of Peking University. “ But it has been a long time and Hong Kong returned to China smoothly, so people here are more impressed with her statesmanship, which kept Britain in the top rank of the world.”

In Hong Kong itself, Thatcher’s handling of the handover still has some sharp critics. From Te-Ping Chen, also at China Real Time:

“That marked a very, very dishonorable chapter in the history of the British Empire,” said Ms. [Emily] Lau, who argues that the former British prime minister “didn’t look after the well-being of Hong Kong people.”

Still, though, Martin Lee, a former Hong Kong legislator and the city’s best-known crusader for democracy, said that those years were a time of greater optimism about the city’s political future. […]

[…] On the eve of the 1997 handover, Mrs. Thatcher sounded an optimistic note in an interview, saying that she hoped Hong Kong would one day be a model for all of China. “Chinese people will come to Hong Kong, they’ll see and they’ll say why is it different, and what is the difference?” she said. “It is the same people, the same talents, but here there is a rule of law founded on the belief that each and every person matters in personal lives,” she said. Hong Kong, she said, “is a flagship of what the China people can do.”

While former Conservative candidate Richard Harris wrote at the South China Morning Post that Thatcher “always had a soft spot for the ordinary people of Hong Kong“, Australian foreign minister Bob Carr recalled her “unabashedly racist” warnings about Asian immigration. The South China Morning Post’s Tom Holland argued that Thatcher “had thrown away her best trump card” in the handover negotiations for the sake of blocking Hong Kong Chinese immigration to the U.K.:

In 1981, her government passed the British Nationality Act, introducing a new class of British citizen and denying the right of abode in Britain to those, like the majority of Hong Kong’s population, who were merely British subjects.

Years later, Monitor asked one senior member of Thatcher’s first cabinet why she had undermined her own negotiating position in this way. He answered that at the time Britain could not possibly have accepted mass immigration from Hong Kong.

But, protested Monitor, the actual number of migrants would have been small. Guaranteed the right of abode in Britain, Hongkongers would have felt secure at home, and London could have got an even better deal for them in Beijing.

Yes, admitted the former minister, but that’s not how the British newspapers would have portrayed it. There was no way, he said, we were going to risk headlines in the London press warning that three million Hong Kong Chinese were heading towards British shores. It would have been political suicide.

Global Times took a somewhat different view from Wang Yizhou’s assessment that Thatcher had “kept Britain in the top rank of the world”. Her rule, it suggested, was one of the final spasms of Britain’s, Europe’s and the West’s global dominance, though she “could well enter history as a distinctive female politician” nonetheless.

A political legacy is always hard to define, and the love and hatred still felt toward Thatcher are distinct. Joining hands with former US president Ronald Reagan, she played a crucial role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. During and after the Falklands War she impressed the world with her hard-line stance, which no Western politicians could compete with afterward.

[…] Her restoration of the British economy represented one of the last glorious achievements of Great Britain, or even Europe.

[…] The moment makes the man, or in this case, the woman. After Thatcher left office, there haven’t been any “iron men” or “iron ladies,” partly because the decline in European power means they cannot uphold an iron stance. The evolution of Western electoral culture makes politicians weak at solving domestic problems.

Also at Global Times, Tian Dewen of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences credited Thatcher with pioneering Western engagement with Beijing:

Thatcher was also [one of] the first Western leaders to propose that the West should press China to engage in international system, instead of excluding it. There were ideological reasons for this. Thatcher hoped “peaceful evolution” in China through the country’s engagement in the international system. However, Thatcher’s proposal also created external conditions for China’s reform and opening-up.

[…] As a right-wing politician, Thatcher was theoretically hostile to communist ideas.

However, on the other hand, she also realized that China’s development was inevitable and the development of China was of significance to the UK.

Historically speaking, as long as any politician can recognize these development trends, he or she is a friend to China anyway.

Actress Melissa Rayworth, who played Thatcher in a state-sponsored TV film, recalled attitudes towards her somewhat differently:

For weeks, we’d been shooting pivotal scenes that chronicled Thatcher’s meeting with Deng in 1982 to negotiate the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, at that point still 15 years away. This tiny, awkward moment — a re-creation of Thatcher’s brief stumble while walking down these very steps after that meeting with Deng in the Great Hall — seemed more important to them than any of her powerful speeches.

They needed the villain to be brought low.

They saw her not as a real person but as a cartoon bad guy – the embodiment of an empire that, in their eyes, had taken a piece of China more than a century before and held the Middle Kingdom hostage when it tried to get the island back.

In any case, some of Thatcher’s influence still lingers even in the Party itself, according to The Telegraph’s Tom Phillips last year:

At Shanghai’s China Executive Leadership Academy, one of the country’s most elite Communist Party schools, Thatcher’s philosophy has found its way onto a “crisis management” course that also focuses on the 2011 UK riots.

[…] Professor Li Min, a lecturer at the institution, said when it came to crisis management Britain’s former prime minister was a model of behaviour.

Baroness Thatcher might seem an unusual choice for the curriculum of an academy grooming the next generation of Chinese leaders. But faculty directors say Shanghai’s Leadership Academy is no ordinary Party school.

“We have an open attitude towards all civilisations that are useful to us, and [we] learn from them,” explained Professor Jiang Haishan, the anglophile head of its international program.

Thatcher has also provided inspiration to China’s neighbors, according to The Economist:

[… I]n South Korea Park Geun-hye, the country’s first female leader, who has been compared to Mrs Thatcher for years and has only encouraged the comparison, expressed “great sorrow” at her death.

Mrs Park now faces her own Falklands moment with the growlings from Pyongyang; but it is Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, who has been more recently inspired by Thatcher the warrior, in his confrontation with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. He admitted being moved to tears by the scene in the film “The Iron Lady” where Mrs Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, speaks about the war in the House of Commons.

In Taiwan, meanwhile, Streep also starred in CTi News’ coverage of Thatcher’s death, replacing footage of Queen Elizabeth that had been used by mistake.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, diaoyu islands, Hong Kong handover, immigration, Margaret Thatcher, Shinzo Abe, U.K.
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“Hen na gaijin” raises the issue of the South China Sea. How likely is a clash over territorial disputes there or the East China Sea?

The danger is not of a strategic decision but of a mistake – a miscalculation, an error, a clash – and that danger gets larger as more vessels crowd into a confined space. Importantly, it can be said that Chinese leaders, even the more hawkish wing, do not actively seek a conflict simply because the Party’s operating principle is to control – and a conflict, by definition, has too many variables it cannot control. The Party knows that one of the few things more destabilizing than a conflict would be a conflict in which it loses.

At the Sydney Morning Herald, John Garnaut offers an explanation for Beijing’s willingness to risk such a conflict. According to sources said to be close to new president Xi Jinping, the stand-off has served as a means for Xi to consolidate his standing within the military, akin to Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam.

“To sort the horses from the mules you need to walk them around the yard,” said the friend.

[…] A second associate of Mr Xi, a retired officer who is the son of one of the People’s Liberation Army’s top commanders, said pushing the PLA onto a war-footing – even an artificial one – was the first and most important stage in his consolidation of political power.

[…] The associates of Mr Xi say the dispute is moving into a less dangerous phase following his successful demonstration of military authority and his appointment as President on Thursday, which was the third and final of his formal leadership titles.

[…] Few believe a senior Chinese leader would deliberately trigger a war, as Deng did with Vietnam after securing a green light from Washington. But Mr Xi’s mobilisation of the military for war preparations may have served a similar purpose.

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Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, diaoyu islands, east china sea, leadership transition, People's Liberation Army, PLA, Sino-Vietnamese War, South China Sea, Xi Jinping
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Sun Yunfan: James Palmer is very insightful in pointing out the “values gap” and “information gap” between the balinghou, or the post-80s generation, and their parents. Aside from being a whole generation of only children—due to the One Child Policy—balinghou kids belong to probably the first generation in Chinese history who collectively enjoyed a good education and relatively unlimited access to information. When they talk to their parents, they often find themselves trapped in a muddled swamp of language filled with fragments of autocratic, superstitious, Confucian, Maoist, and Social Darwinist beliefs—in other words, they don’t share a common ground with their parents on which to have any meaningful discussion.

However, many balinghou believe that this communication crisis that emerged in China in the 21st century is not that different from what the New Youth faced during the May Fourth movement 100 years ago. […]

Orville Schell: I loved reading Palmer’s piece, but as I pondered it, I realized that, as in most complex societies, there are a lot of different currents flowing at the same time. But, what is undeniable in China is that, having first cancelled traditional culture, then made serial efforts to re-invent itself in the guise of a mash-up of Chiang Kai-shekist politics, Confucianism and Christianity; Mao Zedongist proletarian/Marxism; Deng Xiaopingist “to get rich is glorious” market culture, there is now a heightened state of confusion over just what it is that Chinese should make of whatever strange sibuxiang 四不象 (neither fish nor fowl) trend they should take as their True North when it comes to culture and values.

The original article is reposted in condensed form at ChinaFile, but the full version at Aeon Magazine is highly recommended.

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Post tags: Chiang Kai-shek, Christianity, Confucianism, demographics, Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong, maoism, marxism, May 4th, may fourth, one-child policy, Orville Schell, post 80s, values
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Central Propaganda Department: Follow Xinhua wire copy in covering the “Older House Sister case.” Do not sensationalize the story. Cease production of independent reports and commentary. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：对“房姐事件”按新华社通稿刊播，不炒作，不再自行作其它报道评论。

Gong Aiai, former vice president of Shenmu Rural Commercial Bank in Shaanxi Province, has used at least four household registration (hukou) identifications to purchase multiple properties in Beijing, Xi’an, and Shaanxi worth over one billion yuan (US$160 million). She is not to be confused with “Younger House Sister,” the daughter of former Zhengzhou Housing Administration Director Zhai Zhenfeng, who used two hukou to purchase 11 homes.

Central Propaganda Department: No media or websites are to recommend, discuss, or republish coverage of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：各媒体和网站对《邓小平时代》一书不推荐，不评论、不转载。

Ezra Vogel, professor emeritus of Harvard University, published a sweeping biography of Deng Xiaoping in 2011. Feng Keli’s translation has just been published.

Central Propaganda Department: Strictly adhere to Xinhua wire copy in covering the Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun incidents and related issues. No media or website is to independently produce any other form of report or comment, or to link to other material. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：关于薄熙来，王立军事件及相关问题的报道严格按新华社通稿刊播，各媒体及网站不自行作其他任何形式的报道、打分，也不作链接回放。

Central Propaganda Department: The trial for the July 28 Qidong case will begin soon. If covering the story, all media are without exception to use wire copy provided by Xinhua or the Jiangsu provincial government. Do not send reporters to the scene of the incident or to the court. (January 29, 2013)

中宣部：江苏南通启东728案件近日将开庭审理，各媒体如作报道一律采取新华社通稿或江苏省提供的通稿，不派记者到事发地或庭审地采访。

CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, Deng Xiaoping, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Ezra Vogel, Gong Aiai, household registration, hukou, Internet censorship, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, official corruption, Older House Sister, propaganda, Qidong, Wang Lijun, Younger House Sister, Zhai Zhenfeng
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In the first official report on Xi’s southern tour, Xinhua said Xi met local officials and business chiefs from state-owned and private companies and stressed that the restructuring of the economy “admits no delay” if China is not to lose out internationally. Xinhua did not mention other activities on Xi’s southern tour.

Xi was quoted as saing: “We should acknowledge the economic and social achievements we have made so far this year and recognise the long-term fundamentals will remain sound … meanwhile, we should recognise that adverse domestic and overseas effects will be long-term, complicated and winding. We should not run from conflicts and cover up problems.”

Xinhua said Xi interacted intensively with those at the meeting, who raised problems with tax, financial and land policies, the bleak trade outlook and difficulties faced by small businesses. He also told them not to read from prepared scripts.

The New York Times looks at the importance and potential impact of the Shenzhen trip:

Mr. Xi, known as a skillful consensus builder, has kept his ideas carefully veiled throughout his career, but his trip to Shenzhen is the strongest sign yet that he may favor more open policies. In a speech in Beijing on Nov. 29, Mr. Xi spoke of the “Chinese dream” of realizing the nation’s “revival,” which, besides being a call for renewal, also signaled strong nationalist leanings.

Mr. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was a revered senior official handpicked by Mr. Deng to help shape the new economic policies and oversee the creation of the Shenzhen zone. Mr. Xi’s mother lives in Shenzhen, and he visited her on his trip, according to Hong Kong news reports.

“If he indeed went to Shenzhen, that means he intends to make reform a subject of priority,” said Li Weidong, a liberal political analyst. “That would really be a phenomenon.”

Mr. Li cautioned, though, that the so-called reform policies that followed Mr. Deng’s 1992 southern tour, in his view, “ended up being fake” because China’s boom resulted in widespread corruption and the expansion of state enterprises at the expense of private entrepreneurship.

Corruption is indeed the major challenge facing the new Xi administration, which he has confronted so far by requiring simpler and humbler government. For the Council on Foreign Relations, Elizabeth Economy looks at three other strategies Xi and his colleagues may take to try to curb official excesses.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, economic reform, high-level corruption, Shenzhen, Xi Jinping
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The translations are by Rogier Creemers of China Copyright and Media.

12 May 2006, 23:40, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Chen Hua

Everyone, this has been notified in the afternoon, and is now stressed. When reprinting articles criticizing the “No Worries” theater group’s destruction of the environment, do not reprint articles linking this matter with Chen Kaige’s participation in the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony, websites may not report or track netizens’ name-signing activities concerning this matter. All articles and pages that are inconsistent with the above requirements must be speedily removed.

14 May 2006, 10:40, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Fan Tao

All websites are requested to speedily delete the article “Many Hugely Corrupt High Officials Convicted to Suspended Death Sentence, Evoking Challenges,” where special subjects have already been made, please delete them speedily.

15 May 2006, 13:24, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Fan Tao

All websites are requested to use the Qianlong article Beijing Network Media Association Openly Recruits 200 Network Supervision Staff to replace the present header of “Initiating the Wind of Network Civilization,” and place a summary on the main page of websites. Please reprint another Qianlong article Silicon Valley Drives the Start of ‘IT Websites Run the Web in a Civilized Manner’ Activities in the second line of the header at the same time, and put an abstract in the important news section of the news centre. Please acknowledge receipt, thank you.

15 May 2006 (Monday), 16:01

A communication from Chen Hua on revising the above notice:

Everyone, please delete the sentence “with the authorization of the State Council Information Office” from the present article “IT Specialist Websites Establish ‘Civilized Network Association,’” other matters are not changed.

14 May 2006, 18:00, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Huo

The case of the “China Caijing News Magazine” journalist Yang Xiaoqing, who is suspected of extortion is in the process of being tried. In view of the fact that this case is relatively sensitive and complex, concerning information related to this case, websites are requested to only transmit Xinhua copy and information from Hunan Red Net, do not reprint articles from other sources, forums are also not to post this sort of articles.

14 May 2006, 18:00, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Huo

Concerning information on civil servants’ salary adjustment, websites are only to reprint Xinhua copy, it is strictly prohibited to reprint information from any other source, forums are also not to reprint this sort of article, where the Dagong Daily article “Civil Servant Salary Structures Will Be Changed” and others have been reprinted, they must be immediately deleted. Management must be strengthened, all sorts of information, posts and commentary that does not conform to the above requirements must be timely deleted.

16 May 2006, 12:45, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Fan Tao

“Netizens Issue Information Agreement” (Discussion draft – see attachment for content):

I. In the near future, the Municipal Information Office will roll out a model for the agreement, and provide for strict management measures;

II. All websites bear the first responsibility to notify netizens to jointly abide by this agreement;

III. The text of this agreement will have comprehensive requirements in the regulatory, netizen self-discipline and propaganda areas;

IV. This agreement will at the same time protect to the largest extent the rights and interests of netizens to participate regularly in discussions;

V. Before and after the text of this agreement is made public, all relevant departments and work personnel of companies are requested to strictly grasp the scale of discussions.

19 May 2006, 8:50, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Fan Tao

All websites, pay attention, all those having opened trackers on the article “Persisting in Uniting as One and Looking Ahead – Reviewing the Historical Discussion on Deng Xiaoping and Other Older Generation Revolutionaries Concerning Correctly Dealing with the ‘Cultural Revolution,’” please close trackers. Please acknowledge receipt, thank you.

19 May 2006, 14:54, Beijing Municipal Information Office, Fan Tao

Immediately delete that Beijing taxi prices will rise to 2 yuan per kilometer tomorrow.

19 May 2006, Fan Tao

All websites are requested to put the information published by Qianlong Net on the taxi price adjustment (http://beijing.qianlong.com/3825/2006/05/19/134@3182655.htm) in the middle of the important news section, do not make it into a header, close trackers.

19 May 2006, 17:02, Fan Tao

No online reports are to be made of the film Summer Palace that participated in the Cannes Film Festival without permission, do not reprint this sort of information or comments, websites are also not to interview or report on the main creators of Summer Palace. If the content of articles on the Cannes Film Festival involves the film Summer Palace, websites are also requested to reprint or report this, this sort of article is not to be posted on forums, blogs or trackers.

20 May 2006, 18:37, Fan Tao, Municipal Information Office

Please immediately close news trackers on reports concerning the repatriation of Lai Changxing.

Please delete information that the original version of the Mao Zedong portrait will be sold at auction.

2006年5月北京网管办发出的禁令（二）

2006年5月12日23 时40分北京市新闻办公室 陈华

各位，下午通知这，再强调一下。转发批评“无极”剧组破坏环境稿件时，不转发把这一事件与陈凯歌参与2008年奥运会开幕式挂钩的稿件，网站不报道、贴发网民有关此事的签名活动。凡与上述要求不一致的稿件、页面要迅速撤除。

2006年5月14日10时40分 北京市新闻办公室 范涛

请各网迅速删除”多名巨贪高官被判死缓引发质疑”一稿,已经做专题请迅速删除.

2006年5月15日13 时24分 北京市新闻办公室 范涛

请各网用千龙网的稿件《北京网络媒体协会公开征集200名网络监督员》（http://beijing.qianlong.com/3825 /2006/05/15/178@3171683.htm）替换目前“大兴网络文明之风”的头条，并在网站首页做提要。请同时在专题二条位置放千龙网另一 稿件《硅谷动力发起“IT网站文明办网”活动 》（http://beijing.qianlong.com/3825/2006/05/15/178@3171702.htm）并在新闻中心要闻区做 提要。收到请回复，谢谢。

2006-5-15 (星期一) 16:01

转达陈华对上一个通知的修改：

各位，请将目前“IT专业网站成立“文明办网联盟”一稿中，“经国家新闻办公室授权”这句话去掉，其他不变

2006年5月14日18时 北京市新闻办公室 霍

《中国产经新闻报》记者阳小青涉嫌敲诈勒索一案，目前正在审理中。鉴于此案比较敏感、复杂，有关此案的消息，请网站只转发新华社通稿和湖南红网的消息，不转发其他来源的稿件，论坛也不贴发此类文章。

2006年5月14日18时 分 北京市新闻办公室 霍

有关公务员工资调整的消息，网站只转发新华社通稿，严禁转发其他任何来源消息，论坛也不转发此类文章，已转的大公报“公务员工资结构将有改变”等文要立即撤除。要加强管理，凡与上述要求不符的各类消息、帖文、评论要及时删除。

2006年5月16日12时45分 北京市新闻办公室 范涛

《网民发布信息协议》（讨论稿—–内容见附件）

一，近期市新闻办将出台协议范本，规定严厉管理措施；

二，各网站承担通知网民共同遵守该协议的第一责任人；

三，该协议文本具有法规、网民自律与宣传方面的综合要求；

四，该协议同时包含最大限度保护网民正常参与讨论的权益；

五，该协议文本出台前后请公司各相关部门及工作人员严格掌握言论尺度；

2006年5月19日8时50分 北京市新闻办公室 范涛

各网注意：凡对《坚持团结一致向前看——重温邓小平等老一辈革命家关于正确对待“文化大革命”历史的论述》一文开有跟帖的，请关闭跟帖。收到请回复，谢谢。

2006年5月19日14时54分 北京市新闻办公室 范涛

北京出租车租价明起上调为2元/公里，马上删除。

2006年5月19日16 时 分 范涛

千龙网已经发布出租车调价消息（http://beijing.qianlong.com/3825/2006/05/19/134@3182655.htm）请各网放要闻中部，不做大头条，关闭跟帖。

2006年5月19日17时02分 范涛

对未经批准到戛纳电影节参评的电影《颐和园》网上不作报道，不转载此类消息、评论，网站也不采访报道《颐和园》主创人员。如戛纳电影节稿件涉及电影《颐和园》的内容，也请网站不要转载、报道，论坛、博客、跟帖不贴发此类稿件。

2006年5月20日18时 37 分 范涛 市网宣办

关于遣返赖昌星的报道，请立即关闭新闻跟贴。

请删除毛泽东画像母本将被拍卖的消息。

These translated directives were first posted by Rogier Creemers on China Copyright and Media on November 24, 2012 (here).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Beijing Internet Instructions, Beijing taxi price increase, Caijing, Cannes, censorship, Censorship Vault, Chen Hua, Chen Kaige, Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Hunan, Internet censorship, lai changxing, Ministry of Truth, netizens, State Council Information Office, Xinhua, Yang Xiaoqing
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After a long drive up a narrow dirt track through hills east of Pyongyang, a North Korean tour bus dropped the Chinese tourists near a wooded graveyard. In front of it, on a concrete pedestal, stood a bronze bust of Mao Anying, the eldest son of Mao Zedong. This was their holy grail. One by one they laid wreaths and bowed in reverence (see picture). One man kowtowed. Several wept as they delivered speeches in honour of the younger Mao, who died during the Korean war. “We must clean China up and turn it a brilliant red,” said one. Another led the group in chants of “Socialism will be victorious!”

[…] Many of China’s new middle class regard the Maoists as members of a nutty fringe. But to the poor and marginalised, as well as a few idealistic intellectuals, their views are appealing. During their four days in North Korea in October, the Maoists found a country that appeared to be following the right path: one that, in their view, Mao had started down but which his diminutive successor, Deng Xiaoping, had abandoned. “Dwarf Deng destroyed the lives of peasants,” says one member of the group, staring from the bus at new two-storey houses in the countryside on the way to Mao Anying’s memorial in Hoechang county. The suspicions of Potemkinism that constantly prey on the minds of foreign tourists in North Korea appeared not to trouble them.

[…] A retired official from a state-owned oil firm praised the “purity” of North Koreans compared with the Chinese, whose hearts were “filled with black-and-white cats”; a reference to Deng Xiaoping’s famously pragmatic dismissal of ideology, that it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.

For a near mirror image of The Economist’s report, see ‘The Grand Tour‘ at The New Yorker, Evan Osnos’ account of an excursion around Europe with 37 ardent Chinese consumerists.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, leftists, Mao Zedong, maoism, new left, North Korea
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Competing possibilities have been floated in recent days, with the preponderant view being that Mr. Hu, unlike his two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping, will completely retire rather than stay on as the top overseer of military affairs. That would give Mr. Xi greater influence over the military and a firmer grip on power from the start.

But some insiders still suggest that Mr. Hu, who appears to have lost out to Mr. Jiang, 86, in shaping the new lineup for the top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, will nonetheless still hold on to the military post for two more years.

Whatever the outcome, the position, known as chairman of the Central Military Commission, is likely to be the last piece of leverage for Mr. Hu as top party officials tussle down to the wire over promotions of protégés and protection of long-held interests. The bargaining over whether Mr. Hu stays or goes is almost certainly fierce, party insiders said Monday.

The South China Morning post reported yesterday that Hu would step down as military chief this week, which if true would run counter to analyst expectations and mark the first clean transfer of power at the top of the Communist Party in more than two decades. Bloomberg News details the implications of Hu’s decision:

Hu could complicate Xi’s efforts to consolidate power and create new room for political jockeying after China’s leadership transition was roiled by the downfall of former Politburo member Bo Xilai. A confused chain of command may muddle China’s handling of territorial disputes with Japan, at a time when the U.S. is concerned that Chinese leaders are using nationalism to paper over domestic tensions.

“When the party leadership is united, it’s obvious the party controls the gun,” Huang Jing, a political science professor at the National University of Singapore who expects Hu will stay on as military chief, said in a phone interview. “But when the party is divided or weak, whoever has the gun has the last say.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Central Military Commission, Deng Xiaoping, Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, leadership transition, People's Liberation Army, Xi Jinping
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In media commentaries, think-tank position papers and the less censored blogosphere, Hu’s reign is being portrayed as a missed opportunity to tackle longstanding problems grown more deep-seated, from a yawning rich-poor gulf and worsening environmental degradation to stiffly authoritarian politics. One commentary has referred to the period as a “lost decade.”

“We didn’t realize Hu would turn out to be so conservative,” said Wu Jiaxiang, a former party researcher-turned-businessman and avid blogger, summing up the disappointment of many in China’s chattering classes. He dates his own disappointment with Hu to the closing of liberal-minded websites in 2005.

Some of the criticisms are designed to influence Xi Jinping, who will begin taking over from the technocratic, ultra-reserved 69-year-old Hu at a party congress that opens Thursday.

Mainstream state media, which answer to the party and dominate what most Chinese see, read and hear, have been praising the Hu era, calling it a “Glorious Decade.”

It’s clear that Hu will hand Xi the reins to a China very different from the one he inherited from Jiang Zemin in 2002. He spent the better part of his first two years tightening his grip on power and freeing himself from Jiang’s shadow, taking control of the military in early 2005 and steadily gaining influence via a balance of savvy maneuvering and compromise.

But while Jiang’s departure yielded fresh calls for political liberalization, Hu rejected such pursuits from an early stage. He insisted on tightening the government’s control over public opinion and ensuring discipline in the state media, while reinvigorating socialist ideology and reasserting the party’s position in society. He also redoubled efforts to crack down on political dissent and other threats to stability. Within his first three years atop the Party, Hu had rebranded himself from a potentially liberal reformer into a conservative authoritarian who was, as one critic claimed, ideologically more conservative than his predecessor.

Shunning political reform, Hu staked the legitimacy of the party on economic growth instead. He set ambitious goals for the expansion of China’s economy, and briefly stressed the need for social harmony before re-pivoting to focus on the economy as the West began its slide into financial peril in 2007. Hu’s priorities were a “massive gamble,” the University of Sydney’s Kerry Brown claims in Foreign Policy:

Perhaps Hu had no choice but to make this gamble. Perhaps the only way to fend off the public’s rising expectations toward government and paper over growing imbalances between wealthy coastal regions and poorer western ones was to keep his foot on the gas. Whatever the case, the country Hu presides over remains as unequal, if not more, than it was the day he ascended to the top in 2002. China may boast more than 96 dollar billionaires now, but 150 million Chinese still live in poverty. The country may have become the second richest in the world on aggregate, but per capita income hovers near 90th, similar to per capita income in Cuba and Namibia. Shanghainese enjoy a per capita income of more than $12,000 a year. Residents of Guizhou, China’s poorest province, earn a mere $2,500 a year. Hu, of course, is likely quite aware of all this. The party is nothing if not mindful of how social instability pulled down the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the Republican government in 1949.

If Hu is successful in transferring power to Xi and his colleagues over the next six months, then the first plank of his legacy will be complete: He will have cemented the institutionalization of party processes and rules, improving China’s political stability. If everything works smoothly over the next few weeks and months, at the National People’s Congress in March, Hu will follow the constitution and retire as president, having served the maximum of two five-year terms. But the bar for success is high: If China’s new leaders are seen as weak and illegitimate, then their ability to push through continuing economic and political reforms will be limited.

After the succession itself, things get trickier. Chinese leaders no longer pretend the current system is optimal. Even Hu talks of the need for reform beyond just fixing the economy. This is, of course, reform with Chinese characteristics — the question is how the party can modernize and run itself more efficiently so that it can maintain a monopoly on power. But if Hu’s successors manage in the next decade to strengthen the rule of law and empower civil society while introducing greater accountability and transparency for the party — all while managing inequality and other structural challenges — then Hu’s gamble will have proven to be the right one.

China “badly needs political and social reform,” writes Ezra Vogel, who insists that “China has lost its way” as Hu Jintao has not embraced the strategy of bold experimentation that Deng Xiaoping once championed. Even Hu’s remarks at The Great Hall of the People this morning reaffirmed the importance of economic growth as the main prescription for China’s problems, observed Charles Hutzler of The Associated Press. It’s true that China’s economic miracle has been unprecedented. But rapid economic growth has also led to a number of the social and political ills that plague China today, from immense income inequality to environmental destruction, for example, and shrinking credibility with a population increasingly frustrated by corruption at the top. In addition, signs have emerged that the economic formula which fueled China’s rise is no longer viable as it enters its next phase of growth.

For Foreign Affairs, Damien Ma judges that Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao will leave behind “an economic legacy that is far from stellar and a society that is shakier than the one they inherited:”

It is little wonder that bottom-up social pressures are building in China and that such pressures risk destabilizing the entire political system. Indeed, the most remarkable transformation that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has undergone in the past decade is not its shift toward market capitalism but rather its evolution into an elitist political organization that enjoys preferential access to economic opportunities at the expense of the average member of the Chinese middle class. A recent flurry of reports from Western journalists exposed that top Chinese officials have accumulated immense wealth with little transparency. Even Wen’s avuncular and humble public image has been shaken by revelations that he may have amassed as much as $2.7 billion. Consequently, achieving greater equality and economic fairness — and therefore mitigating instability — has become as much a political concern for Beijing as an economic one.

Rarely has the Hu administration viewed further political liberalization as the answer to growing economic and social ills. If the incoming Xi administration fails to recognize that political changes are necessary to untangle the complexity of China’s mounting challenges, the CCP could well find its own political resilience seriously tested over the course of the next decade. Tolerating more transparency and accommodating the rule of law are among the key reforms that could mitigate the pressures on the political system. But if Beijing continues to resist, when the next major transition comes in 2021, rather than celebrating its 100th birthday, the CCP could be pondering how it let its power slip away.

Hu will likely retain a reasonable degree of influence within the party after he steps down, as have the leaders who came before him, if for any reason because he is expected to keep control of the military for the time being. If rumors circling at the party congress about the new revamped Politburo Standing Committee lineup are any indication, however, Yanzhong Huang suggests that Hu’s grip on power has already loosened. From the Council on Foreign Relations’ Asia Unbound blog:

Compared to the ordinary Chinese, intellectuals, professionals, and government officials care about the Party Congress – they are generally more informed about the Congress. At the banquet table these officials and intellectuals were open in discussing candidates for the new Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) and patron client ties in China’s officialdom. An updated list of PBSC members is circulating on the eve of the political meeting. To my surprise, many different people talked about the same list. From the list it is clear that President Hu has suffered a huge political setback and former President Jiang Zemin has emerged as a clear winner in the game of power redistribution. Reform minded leaders such as Li Yuanchao and Wang Yang are not included in this list. All of this ultimately might not bode well for the prospect of political reform in China.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, CCP, Deng Xiaoping, dissent, economic growth, Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, leadership transition, legitimacy, Politburo Standing Committee, political reform, Xi Jinping
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It’s remarkable that so little is known about what will actually happen during the upcoming conclave. A Service Guide for Journalists notes helpfully that Western-style snacks will be served in the Press Center but there is no real detail about actual events. As of Monday afternoon, an online guide to the upcoming Party Congress had listed only two events directly related to the Communist gathering: a cocktail party for journalists on Nov. 6 and a press conference the day after. Like most press conferences in China, it’s certain Wednesday’s event will be a scripted one in which random journalists won’t be allowed to fling questions at the 18th Party Congress’ spokesperson.

Even the date when the Congress will end is not clear, although many people suspect it will be Nov. 15. “We have no detailed information of the schedule of the 18th Party Congress,” Yue Xiaosong, an official at the 18th Party Congress Press Center, told TIME on Monday. “I don’t know the date when the Congress will finish.” Yue’s only suggestion to TIME was that we should look at previous Party Congress schedules as a general guideline. But he quickly cautioned that we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from the past. “It will depend on how well the 18th Party Congress goes,” he said, when pressed on just when the confab will end. No details were provided on what he meant by the meeting going “well.” A TIME colleague suggests the wording on the cap in the press swag bag should be changed to: “Somebody I know went to the 18th Party Congress, and all I got was this stupid hat.”

Despite the heightened restrictions in Beijing, The South China Morning Post’s Keith Zhai notes that ordinary mainlanders are “gripped by an overwhelming sense of apathy” and feel little connection to politics. The Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore reports that in contrast with American voters, the Chinese public “remains utterly cut off from the political process,” and those that do care are left to sift through official speeches and state media coverage for hints of what will happen and who will comprise the Politburo Standing Committee:

Indeed, while we know that the leadership change will happen at the 18th Party Congress, which opens on Thursday, we do not know exactly when the new leaders will be unveiled or when the congress will end. Those in China cannot even search for the phrase “18th party congress” on the internet: it has been removed by the censors.

All we can be sure of is that, at some point in the near future, a group of men – and they are all likely to be men – will walk on to a dais in the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square. These will be the seven members of the politburo standing committee, the Chinese equivalent of the Cabinet, selected (by an essentially mysterious process) from among the 25 politburo members originally elected by the party’s 300-strong central committee.

The lack of any real information, however, hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning about last-minute horse trading at the top of the party. Sources have told Reuters that ten finalists are vying for seven seats on the Standing Committee, and The New York Times reports that China’s “beleaguered liberals” have their fingers crossed in hope that the reform-minded Guangdong party chief Wang Yang is one of them. Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution provides more details on the “tussle” taking place between the “populist” and “princeling” factions, and what it might mean for regime stability going forward.

Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor, meanwhile, spoke to several China analysts who think that closed-door power-broking may give way to a succession protocol based more on consensus under future leadership transitions. Reuters echoed that sentiment in a Tuesday article as well, and went even further, quoting sources who hinted that the Communist Party may not wait until the next generation to adopt a more democratic process for choosing its leadership:

Under their proposal, there would be up to 20 percent more candidates than seats in the new Politburo in an election to be held next week, the sources said. It was unclear if competitive voting would also be extended to the Standing Committee.

“Hu wants expanding intra-party democracy to be one of his legacies,” one source said, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for discussing secretive elite politics.

“It would also be good for Xi’s image,” the source added.

Orville Schell writes that the incoming generation of Chinese leaders will not have the rubber stamp of legitimacy that Deng Xiaoping bestowed on Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, nor the mandate typically provided by democratic elections. Instead, he says China “finds itself floating terrifyingly in a gravity-less political world” that continues to spin. From the Asia Society’s China File:

The problem is compounded by the fact that, having relieved through its own reform process of the kind of Big Leader rule which allowed megalomaniacal visions to so often wreak havoc on the country—paradoxically just as the West tirelessly challenged it to—China now finds itself without precisely that kind of bold decision-making power at the top that characterized Deng Xiaoping’s quite extraordinary tenure (June 1989 not withstanding) and enabled him to be such a bold reformer.

With no entitled big leader, no confirmed political system capable of conferring legitimacy on new leaders, and no set plan for the future, China nonetheless still finds itself forced somehow to choose a new leadership team. This has left “the people,” who have no real role to play in this process, feeling quite shut out and nervous about what the future holds for them.

Although it is impossible to know what is actually going inside the black box where China’s leaders wrangle over their future, people hear that the process has been intense, even acrimonious. And, since they do not even know what each leader or faction actually stands for, a climate of uncertainty and anxiety has been increasing. Such feelings are hardly surprising, for here in China everything is veiled, hidden, and opaque. And yet, this whole amazingly dynamic proposition continues to hurtle down the tracks, just as I am doing now, even as everyone knows that somewhere ahead, the tracks end. Nobody, especially the present leadership, seems to quite know how to resolve this crisis in confidence, how to pick those who will follow them and write the script for the next act that will set China’s future course.

The information vacuum also hasn’t stopped the Chinese press from saturating the newspapers and airwaves with stories about the congress. Danwei’s Barry van Wyk surveyed the front pages on Monday and found predictable yet “utterly uniform” coverage, though some papers broke ranks to report on Bo Xilai’s expulsion from the CCP and other news. Elsewhere, David Bandurski of The China Media Project has made “fruitless” searches for “18th Party Congress” within the realms of Chinese social media. Today, he highlighted a post on Sina Weibo which speculated about the lineup of the congress and was deleted by censors.

Reform remains the key buzzword in the press as the opening of the congress draws closer, but McClatchy Newspapers’ Tom Lasseter spoke to several academics who suggested that the West should temper its expectations of major political changes. The biggest policy developments, they say, will likely come in the economic arena. Caixin has published a list of 18 recommended economic reforms that the incoming leadership should pursue, a list that includes SOE reforms, environmental protection and tax cuts among other more ambitious requests such as downsizing the government itself.

Finally, beneath the pomp and circumstance that is sure to blanket the congress, The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reminds readers that the Communist Party does have a bit of governing to do as well:

The Chinese leadership “knows the legitimacy of the party now depends on performance, in terms of delivering services and improvements in living standards”, said Steve Tsang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Nottingham.

The result is what he calls “a consultative Leninist system … They want to know what people think so they can take away the causes of discontent and potential challenges to the party. That’s not the same as the accountability we would talk about and expect in Europe or North America; it’s more of a safety valve and has an element of [the Maoist injunction] ‘from the masses, to the masses’.”

See also a Reuters’ primer on the congress, which details the likely agenda and ponders potential new policy initiatives that the delegates may introduce, and previous CDT coverage of the 18th Party Congress.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Beijing, Bo Xilai, CCP 5th generation, censorship, Deng Xiaoping, economic reform, Great Hall of the People, Jiang Zemin, leadership transition, legitimacy, Politburo Standing Committee, political reform, princelings, sina weibo, Wang Yang
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