The image of Peng in a green military uniform, her windswept hair tied back in a ponytail as she sings to helmeted and rifle-bearing troops seated in rows on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, contrasts with her appearances this week in trendy suits and coiffed hair while touring Russia and Africa with Xi, waving to her enthusiastic hosts.

“I think that we have a lot of people hoping that because Xi Jinping walks around without a tie on and his wife is a singer who travels with him on trips that maybe we’re dealing with a new kind of leader, but I think these images remind people that this is the same party,” said Kelley Currie, a China human rights expert for the pro-democracy Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

“It’s using some new tools and new techniques, for the same purposes: to preserve its own power.”

[...]

“The photo probably has a negative impact more so internationally than domestically,” said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at City University of Hong Kong. He said more scrutiny of Peng is likely and such images could raise questions about Xi’s interest in reforms.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: June 4th, Peng Liyuan, People's Liberation Army, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

While it may be politically touchy to talk about Peng’s overcoat, digging into the darker corners of her past is totally off-limits. Weibo user @HKfighter posted the image below from Open Magazine [zh], a liberal Hong Kong journal, showing a young Peng entertaining the troops in Tiananmen Square in June 1989:

@HKfighter: After the Tiananmen Massacre, Peng Liyuan sang to comfort the soldiers. Open Magazine published this photo. [Then] for the 82nd anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party [in 2003], she sang the theme song for a commemorative film, declaring “fight for power, rule the country,” the heartfelt thoughts of the Party elders.

中共六四屠杀后，彭丽媛去唱歌慰问戒严部队，开放杂志发表过这张照片。中共建党82年，她为向党献礼片江山唱的主题曲声言“打江山，坐江山”，唱出中共元老们的心声。

Since the posting of this weibo, the original @HKfighter account has been deleted.

Via CDT Chinese.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, censorship, Empire Illustrated, Internet censorship, Peng Liyuan, weibo, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

“Now is the end of our quest for a graceful first lady,” wrote the deputy editor of the Hong Kong Commercial Daily newspaper on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

The Beijing News ran a full page of stories about Mrs Peng’s itinerary in Moscow, alongside a photograph of her arriving at a speech dressed in an elegant Chinese-style silk tunic and skirt.

“In her role as first lady on this visit abroad, Peng Liyuan is exhibiting China’s soft power,” Wang Fan, head of the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University, told the newspaper.

The footage of her in Moscow quickly caused something akin to the “Kate Middleton effect”, with copies of her coat instantly appearing on Taobao, an online shopping site, for 499 yuan (£53) – and advertised as “in the same style as the first lady’s”.

Already a celebrity in her own right as a famous singer, Peng has taken center stage as the Chinese Communist Party looks to polish its image. She could be a valuable diplomatic asset as China struggles to effectively project its soft power abroad, according to Jane Perlez and Bree Feng of The New York Times:

It could be that Ms. Peng’s star power will push the diplomats into the background. Although Mr. Xi may not like the comparison, some see her as a figure akin to Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who helped humanize the Soviet leader as the Soviet Union fell apart. Mr. Xi has singled out Mr. Gorbachev as a man who let down the cause of Communism.

Others see her as roughly equivalent to Michelle Obama: modern, outgoing, intrigued by fashion. They await the moment when Ms. Peng and Mrs. Obama stand with their husbands at a state visit, either in Washington or Beijing, a lineup that is likely to happen in the next four years. The couples share some common ground. The Obamas have two daughters; Mr. Xi and Ms. Peng have one daughter, Xi Mingze, who is registered under a pseudonym as an undergraduate at Harvard.

While China’s censors sprung into action to block searches for the overcoat Peng wore in Moscow, The Wall Street Journal reports that her clothing selection may have boosted the prospects of several domestic clothing companies rumored to have made them.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, diplomacy, fashion, Michelle Obama, Moscow, Peng Liyuan, soft power, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Kunming PX Plant: A p-Xylene (PX) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) processing plant is planned for the Anning Industrial Park [zh]. Anning County is located within Kunming Prefecture, Yunnan Province. Plans to build PX plants have been thwarted by concerned citizens throughout China over the past few years, notably in 2007 in Wuxi and last fall in Ningbo.

Clockwise from top right: Mao Zedong, Hu Jintao, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin. (artist unknown)

• Anning+PX (安宁+PX)
• Kunming+PX (昆明+PX)
• boycott PX (抵制PX)

Xi Jinping:
• boss Xi (习boss)
• Xi+Peng (习+彭): Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan
• Xi+first lady (习+国母)
• Xi+fake (习+假): We are unsure why this is blocked. Reader tips welcome.
• Xi+king (习+王): As in “Crown Prince Xi” (习王储), etc.
• Xi+Jiang (习+江): Xi Jinping and Jiang Zemin
• Xi+Li (习+李): Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang
• Xi+chief (习+总)

Other:
• hu+wen: Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.
• nine presidents (九总统): Refers to the nine members of the outgoing Politburo Standing Committee (PSC); the number of PSC members has been reduced to seven.

In addition, the terms below have been blocked from Sina Weibo search results as of March 22:

• Huangpu River+dead pigs (黄浦江+死猪): Over 15,000 pig carcasses have been fished out of the Huangpu, the source of more than 20% of Shanghai’s water.
• Peng Liyuan+similar items (彭丽媛+同款): Netizens chatted eagerly about the overcoat Peng wore on her first trip as first lady. “Similar terms” is a search term on the shopping site Taobao; sellers listed her coat, complete with photos of her on the tarmac in Moscow [zh].
• first lady+similar items (第一夫人+同款)
• Auntie Peng (彭阿姨)
• Mrs. Xi (习夫人): retested
• Xi+old (习+老): As in Elder Brother Xi (习老大) Boss Xi (习老板), etc.
• Jiang faction (江派): Party leaders with allegiance to Jiang Zemin, such as Xi.

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 posts (March 24 and March 22).

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Anning, censorship, Hu Jintao, Internet censorship, Jiang Zemin, Kunming, Kunming PX, Li Keqiang, Ministry of Truth, Peng Liyuan, PX, Sensitive Words Series, weibo, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping, Yunnan
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Peng, 50, is known for singing soaring patriotic songs in praise of the Communist Party, often while clad in glittering floor-length ball gowns and occasionally in Chinese ethnic minority costume (think Barbra Streisand in Native American garb). She was born in Shandong province, enrolled at Shandong University of Art and Design at age 14, and joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1980, at 18. In 1986 she married Xi Jinping. Her daughter, Xi Mingze, was born in 1992 and stays invisible too (she studies at Harvard under an assumed name).

[...] Fast-forward to now: the Financial Times just reported that Peng will not only accompany Xi to the BRICS summit in Durban, South Africa, this month, but will speak there. “She can help China build soft power,” said a source in the piece. Peng also became a Goodwill Ambassador for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS—a controversial subject in China—for the World Health Organization last year and won a splashy $160,000 China Arts Award in December.

[...] Pressure is on for the CCP to burnish its image. Overly outsize stars within—or married to—the party can be reined in, but society at large is developing a celebrity culture, and that’s a threat too. More and more, people look up to leaders from business, pop culture, and the Internet. Alibaba founder Jack Ma inspires Steve Jobs–like reverence in China. Real-estate tycoon Zhang Xin is affiliated with the World Economic Forum and the Council on Foreign Relations and is becoming a thought leader. And the rabid following behind Li Yang, founder of Crazy English, is downright cultlike.

See also Is Xi’s Wife a New Kind of First Lady?, via CDT.

See more on Peng Liyuan via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AIDS activism, leadership transition, Peng Liyuan, PLA, soft power, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In June 2011, she stepped up her role, becoming a World Health Organization ambassador for tuberculosis and AIDS — even as her husband was heading for the top. Hood says it would be a loss of face for her to step down now. But China’s first ladies have traditionally played a supporting role not much seen in public. So could China be paving the way for a new kind of first lady?

“I really do hope so,” Hood says. “[Peng] is an incredibly talented woman. She’s very well-educated, she speaks well, she’s knowledgeable, she’s powerful. And she’s one of the perfect people to pave the way for a new role model.”

But there is official nervousness about Peng already. Her name has become a forbidden search term on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, and several online stories about her have been deleted recently.

Given China’s recent history, Peng’s cultural and artistic background doesn’t necessarily work in her favor. The last high-profile spouse in recent memory was Madame Mao — or Jiang Qing — the wife of Chairman Mao Zedong who dictated the country’s cultural life for a decade, limiting cultural fare to a series of “revolutionary operas” and “revolutionary songs.”

Jiang was subsequently blamed for the decade-long Cultural Revolution, and sentenced to a suspended death sentence as a member of the “Gang of Four.” She committed suicide in prison in 1991, but her legacy is one that hangs over all subsequent first ladies, consigning them to the background.

Most have assumed that Peng would take on a more subdued role during Xi’s tenure as China’s leader, and Newsweek’s Melinda Liu writes that she has scaled back her profile ever since her husband was tagged as the Communist Party’s heir apparent:

In that sense, Peng, despite her celebrity status, is no different from previous political wives in post-Mao China who have largely shunned the limelight. This trend partly reflects a visceral backlash against the toxic legacy of Mao Zedong’s last wife, Jiang Qing, a former B-grade Shanghai starlet who has been blamed for the bloody excesses of China’s Cultural Revolution. It also partly reflects a longstanding Chinese tradition, which discourages women from dabbling in politics. “In ancient times, the empress was never allowed to cultivate her own supporters,” said Li Yinhe, a sociologist and gender studies expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. “And communist culture hasn’t given official roles to first ladies.”

Peng has yet to appear in public since Xi was annointed earlier this month as China’s new leader; there was no highly publicized “victory embrace” between China’s new power couple, like the one Americans witnessed between Barack and Michelle Obama. Yet ordinary Chinese like the Xi-Peng narrative, especially her admission that Xi knew he wanted to marry her just 40 minutes after they met—even though her parents initially opposed the match. “They married for love; it wasn’t arranged. And that’s romantic,” says Li. “Communist cadres are often seen as robotlike, but Peng is warmly accepted by people.” That acceptance has bolstered Xi’s popularity at a time of considerable uncertainty in China. Perhaps politics in the East and West aren’t so different after all.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Jiang Qing, leadership transition, Mao Zedong, Peng Liyuan, pop music, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Yan Jingjing, daughter of PLA Song and Dance Troupe singer Yan Weiwen, is unsearchable on Sina Weibo.

Pinyin Spelling of Leaders’ Names:
- [Zhang] dejiang: Member of the newly elected Politburo Standing Committee (PSC).
- [Zhang] gaoli: New PSC member.
- jiaqinglin: One of the outgoing PSC members.
- [Xi] jinping: Incoming CCP president. Re-tested.
- [Li] keqiang: Incoming CCP prime minister.
- [Wang] qishan ([王] 岐山): New PSC member.
- wangyang (汪洋): Party Secretary of Guangdong Province. Wang’s absence from the new PSC troubles those who hope for reform in China’s new leadership.
- [Liu] yunshan ([刘] 云山): New PSC member.
- [Yu] zhengsheng ([俞] 正声): New PSC member.

Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan:
- XiJP (习JP): Xi Jinping
- Secretary Xi (习书记)
- Crown Prince/Emperor Xi (习皇（储/帝）)
- Xi Cannot-Comment (习禁评): re-tested
- Chairman Xi (习主席): re-tested
- Lady Xi (习夫人): Refers to Peng Liyuan.
- Lady Peng (彭夫人)
- Her Majesty the Empress (皇后娘娘)
- First Lady (第一夫人)
- Mother of the Nation (国母): re-tested

Other Post-18th-Party-Congress Terms:
- Seven Chiefs (七巨头): Refers to the seven new members of the PSC.
- Prime Minister Li (李总理): Li Keqiang
- Kim Il-sung + university (金日成+大学): Official documents reveal that PSC member Zhang Dejiang graduated with a degree in economics from North Korea’s Kim Il-sung University.
- join the PSC (入常): re-tested
- Liu Yongqing (刘永清): Hu Jintao’s wife.
- Prime Minister Wen (温总理): Wen Jiabao
- Bo Wen (薄温): Refers to Bo Xilai and Wen Jiabao.
- Yan Jingjing (阎晶晶): Yan Weiwen’s daughter, who is also Li Zhaoxing’s daughter-in-law. Yan Weiwen is a tenor in the People’s Liberation Army General Political Department Song and Dance Troupe. Li Zhaoxing served as ambassador to the U.S. from 1998 to 2001, and as a PSC member and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2007.
- Li Hehe (李禾禾): Li Zhaoxing’s son. Re-tested.

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

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.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, censorship, Hu Jintao, Internet censorship, Jia Qinglin, Li Hehe, Li Keqiang, li zhaoxing, Liu Yongqing, Liu Yunshan, Peng Liyuan, People's Liberation Army, Politburo Standing Committee, Sensitive Words Series, sina weibo, Wang Qishan, Wang Yang, weibo, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping, Yan Jingjing, Yan Weiwen, Yu Zhengsheng, zhang dejiang, Zhang Gaoli
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

No Michelle Obama-style advocacy. Nor Jackie Kennedy-like glamour. Simply the expectation that one will fade into the black cloak of secrecy that surrounds all of China’s leaders.

And yet if anyone could break free of that muted tradition, it would be Peng, one of China’s most recognizable folk singers.

For most of her marriage to China’s current vice president, Xi Jinping, her fame has eclipsed his. A civilian member of the Chinese army’s musicale troupe, she was admired by hundreds of millions for her annual performances on state television’s New Year’s Eve shows. And according to people who have met her, she exudes an easy grace, a confident grasp of conversational English and a seemingly sincere heart for charitable causes.

“If this were the West, one would say she has the perfect requirements for being a leader’s wife: beauty, stage presence, public approval,” said one party intellectual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his work teaching future government officials at party schools. “But things are different in China.”

In another profile of Peng, the Globe and Mail looks at the early days of Peng and Xi’s relationship:

In Ms. Peng’s telling, it was her husband who did the courting when they first met. In a rare newspaper interview ahead of her husband’s promotion to the Standing Committee, she told the Zhejiang Daily that when the couple went on their first date in 1986, she dressed in plain military attire to make sure that he paid attention to her personality rather than her widely admired looks.

Mr. Xi, then 32 and a recent divorcée, was already rising political star, the executive vice-mayor of the port city of Xiamen. While he couldn’t match for the national celebrity of his 24-year-old companion, he didn’t seem aware of that.

“In our first encounter, I found his dress outmoded and severely plain, while [his face] looked older than his real age,” Ms. Peng told the Zhejiang Daily in 2007. “He didn’t even realize how famous I was and that I was the original performer of one of his favourite songs.”

Despite Mr. Xi’s underwhelming first impression, the couple married a year later. The future president apparently charmed her with his knowledge of music theory. “At that time, I was very moved. Isn’t this the one I’ve been looking for?” the Zhejiang Daily quoted Ms. Peng saying. “He’s unsophisticated but he’s really intelligent.”

The South China Morning Post tells the story of their daughter’s birth, during which Xi Jinping was called away for work and was not present:

A provincial foreign affairs official said Xi’s wife, famous soprano Peng Liyuan – who holds the rank of major general in the People’s Liberation Army, was in Fuzhou as her due date approached and hoped that Xi would be present for the birth.

“But at that time, Fuzhou was hit by a strong typhoon, and Xi had to direct disaster relief work in the worst-hit area, keeping him away for three days and nights,” the official said.

Many officials in Fujian said that most people in the province were aware that Xi had ordered Peng not to accept offers of freelance work after their marriage, causing her to lose countless opportunities to make money.

“When Xi was in Xiamen, he even asked Peng to do free performances for local people,” the foreign affairs official said.

“Xi is so lucky to have such a virtuous and approachable wife, who has helped earn him a lot of publicity.”

The Washington Post has compiled a slideshow of Chinese First Ladies, past and present. See also Peng’s performances of Our Motherland:

And of The Laundry Song, a propaganda song about Tibet, the significance of which is explained by High Peaks Pure Earth:

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, CCP 5th generation, Peng Liyuan, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

She has a resume that would make U.S. political consultants drool: A renowned soprano who’s performed for troops serving the motherland, opera fans at Lincoln Center and ordinary Chinese watching annual TV variety galas, she’s also a World Health Organization goodwill ambassador in the fight against tuberculosis and HIV.

[…] “As a new leader, you always should give some kind of freshness to the public. You need to uplift the public confidence, and it’s really quite low in the wake of the Bo Xilai scandal and the economic slowdown,” said Cheng Li, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. “Xi needs to do a lot himself, but with a beautiful, popular first lady, this kind of image could be very helpful.”

[…] Johanna Hood, a postdoctoral fellow at Australian National University who has studied Peng’s public health work, noted that activism around AIDS in China can be seen as both supporting the government and implicitly criticizing its response to the disease.

“I imagine it became a bit awkward with the rise of Xi Jinping. If you look at her language, how she talks about it — she says ‘it appeals to my motherly instincts; my child had such a good upbringing, and so I must do something’ — that rounds off some of the political edges of it,” Hood said. “But just being involved in AIDS activism is a political statement, and I imagine that the people who deal with her public image are grappling with that.”

John Garnaut dug into Xi’s own background and career at Foreign Policy (via CDT) last week, while on Sunday CDT’s Mengyu Dong examined women’s standing in college admissions, at state-owned enterprises and soon, perhaps, on the Politburo Standing Committee. For a glimpse of Peng’s star power, see her rendition of the classic Red Song, Laundry Song, via High Peaks Pure Earth:

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AIDS, AIDS activism, gu kailai, HIV/AIDS, Jiang Qing, leadership transition, Li Keqiang, Peng Liyuan, women in politics, world health organization, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The fact is that Tibetan “Red Songs” have been around for a while, High Peaks Pure Earth has translated a song from 1964 called “Laundry Song” (Chinese title: 洗衣歌 Xiyi Ge, Tibetan title: gos ‘khru’i gzhas) that is still being covered, performed and can be regularly heard at official occasions and gatherings. “Laundry Song” was first performed on stage in Beijing in 1964 …

The song tells the familiar Socialist narrative of the army and the people being one. For the Sino-Tibetan relationship though, the song puts the Tibetans firmly in a position of subservience, as natives, full of gratitude for the help of the benevolent People’s Liberation Army. The trope of washing clothes fits in also with the Socialist pre-occupation with Patriotic Hygiene where “observing hygienic rules came to be seen as patriotic”.

The song’s lyrics:

Hey!

Who is going to help us turn over a new leaf?
Who is going to liberate us?
It’s the dear PLA
The saving star of the Communist Party

The army and people are one family
Helping us to wash our clothes …

Read more about the nostalgia for red culture that is sweeping China on the eve of the CCP’s 90th anniversary.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: music, Peng Liyuan, People's Liberation Army, red songs, songs, Tibet, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Mao, Deng, Jiang and Hu were all represented together during the festivities. And in fact, the ceremonies included two anthems symbolic of Hu Jintao’s leadership.

“Oh, Lovely Land,” which accompanied the massive portrait of Hu, is perhaps not an anthem in praise of him personally, but praises him indirectly as a leader who “governs for the people”:

The ordinary people are the earth;
The ordinary people are the sky.

“On the Sunny Road,” which Peng Liyuan (彭丽媛) sang over the grandiose fireworks display, was a clear and conscientious choice:

On the sunny road,
In the air the banners soar.
Scientific development and harmony,
Guide China to brighter shores.

“Scientific development” and the “harmonious society” are of course markers of Hu Jintao. They are his political banners.

These four songs — or five — all fall into China’s tradition of what can be called “song politics,” or gequ zhengzhi (歌曲政治). They mark the intersection of high-level power plays and political slogans with the realm of culture and popular entertainment.

They are also relics of the totalitarian era.

Watch Peng Liyuan perform “On the Sunny Road”:

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1949 60 years, Peng Liyuan, propaganda
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The particulars of the Obama courtship are pretty tame compared to the passionate romance of China’s political power couple, Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan. Xi, 54, the top-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party is considered the potential successor of China’s president Hu Jintao. Xi gained his appointment last October at the 17th party Congress, when the public knew little about him. But his 46 year-old wife, Peng, was and is the number one folk singer in China. She has been a favorite with fans since her 1982, hit “At the Hope Land.” And ever since Xi’s appointment, Xi and Peng’s love story began appearing in Chinese media. Peng has said she once traveled 250 miles to bring Xi a handmade futon to keep him warm.

Americans may be accustomed to hearing about the private lives of their presidents and presidential candidates, but this is probably the first time since the days of Chairman Mao that the Chinese are learning so much about their top leader’s love life. More recent Chinese presidents, such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin tried to keep their wives out of the public spotlight and distance them from politics. The current president Hu’s wife only shows up on TV sometimes when there are diplomatic events. Of course Chairman Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, the key member of Gang of Four, was deeply into politics and became partially responsible for directing the tragedy of the Cultural Revolution.

(Music from Sogou, in the Album of Chang’e 1 Satellite Songs )

© Wu Nan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, Chang'e 1, music, Peng Liyuan, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Do Chinese leaders ever kiss their wives or hug their children? Surely they do, but you would never know it from the state media, which portray them all as somber look-alikes in dark suits who talk only of weighty national affairs before lining up for group photos that are as stiff and colorless as most of their rhetoric.

That deliberate dullness – no doubt a response to the cult of personality developed by Mao Zedong and, to a lesser extent, his successor, Deng Xiaoping – may soon change.

(...)
Read the rest of Beauty and the Bores – Kent Ewing (71 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV, Peng Liyuan, Xi Jinping
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall