For the past several months, China’s State Council Information Office has been hosting a series of press conferences intended to showcase the accomplishments of various government ministries and provincial-level governments. Following the end of the Third Plenum in late July, there was a flurry of these press conferences, but the online public reaction was decidedly underwhelming. Comment sections of online news reports about the glowing press conferences were filled with skeptical assessments and dissenting opinions, leading to comment filtering and the deletion of some comments. CDT editors have compiled a brief summary of these press conferences and a selection of some of the responses from Chinese netizens.
At a July 23 press conference, Yun Donglai, a deputy director of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, announced that in the first half of this year, “Employment among college graduates and other young people was generally stable, and the employment of migrant workers was stable and showed some improvement.” High rates of youth unemployment have proven to be a thorny problem, particularly coupled with unhelpful government responses: first ceasing to report youth unemployment statistics, then changing the metric by which youth unemployment is calculated, while promoting propaganda that urges young workers to embrace hardship or recent college graduates to take manual-labor jobs. Deputy Director Yun’s pronouncement was met with ridicule online, apparent in some of the comments left on Weibo and Douyin, and the comment filtering that followed:
虚云圆桥：Sanctimonious nonsense.
sailingheat：As “stable” as a flatlining heartbeat.
重生库洛洛：Every day, they send someone out to brazenly lie to the public.
正经良民6：Unconscionable lies.
白雪咖啡厅Vivi：Wow, each spokesperson is more bogus than the last.
卉一大夫：”Stable” is just another way of saying “no improvement.” [Chinese]
A day later, at a series of State Council Information Office press conferences on the theme of “promoting high-quality development,” Han Jun, Party chief of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, announced, “Per capita disposable income for rural residents was 11,272 yuan [$1,575 U.S. dollars] in the first six months of this year, an increase of 6.6% from the same period last year, and was 2.1 percentage points higher than the per capita income growth rate for urban residents.” Online reaction to Han’s statement was swift, with many Weibo and Douyin users complaining that these optimistic figures did not tally at all with the economic situation in the countryside. Similar past pronouncements on rural incomes were also met with skepticism and caveats from netizens, and articles on rural poverty and the living conditions of rural residents and migrant workers continue to be frequently censored. This time around, some commenters sardonically mentioned “launching Sputniks” or “10,000 catties per mu,” phrases that reference the insanely optimistic targets and grossly exaggerated rice and grain yields reported by localities in the late 1950s and early 1960s, during China’s Great Leap Forward and ensuing three years of nationwide famine:
嶺南老孟：I have this fucking overwhelming urge to belt him one in the mouth.
杨大渭：Yields in excess of 10,000 catties per mu.
阿Jay的自我救赎：A lot of [lucrative] crops, such as lychees and grapefruit, failed this year.
wesleyhong1973：I recall that back in the sixties, those who spouted this sort of reckless “Sputnikism” caused countless numbers of people to starve to death. I feel sorry for the post-90s generation.
赤沙王子：What utter nonsense … completely out of touch with reality …
跑者-bobo：A bullshit increase …
微微的生活：That wouldn’t even pay for one meal for a greedy, corrupt cadre.
工业迷cq2021：I really think some of this data is made up. Rural people are still having to migrate to the cities for work, and it’s getting harder and harder for them. [Chinese]
The following day, on July 25, the National Healthcare Security Administration released its statistical bulletin for 2023, which noted that “more than 1.3 billion Chinese people participate in the basic national medical insurance program,” and that “China’s healthcare system is generally operating smoothly, and its financial operations are secure and sustainable.” Although the report made no exaggerated claims and was not as overhyped as some of the other press conferences, this news item elicited many pessimistic responses in the Douyin and Weibo comment sections:
最恶心的玩意儿：Everything’s stable and moving in the right direction!
琉璃兔筱苝：So many taxpayers, but we still can’t achieve universal healthcare.
德先生爱吃生煎包：I stopped paying into the pension fund a few years ago, and I only kept up the [public] medical insurance because it was required for private insurance. Otherwise I would have stopped paying that, too, long ago.
记录人生-人生不易：Retired cadres are very stable and well-provided for.
greker_83760：The situation is excellent. The more hospital presidents, the better!
小小豆糖1：How come there are still 100 million people who don’t have medical insurance, if the government is supposedly investing so much in it? If everyone were doing so well, these bureaucrats wouldn’t have a job—they could just pack it up and go home.
爱乐者王：I’m a “three-no” person … I’ve got nothing, so I guess I don’t count.
雷电交加888：Reality paints a different picture.
Allen_Chaos_Z：I’m uninsured. [Chinese]
