China’s Political Discourse June 2023: Raising the Children for the Party
Edited by Chu Yang and David L. Bandurski of The China Media Project
This monthly report is prepared for Sinocism by the excellent China Media Project. You can read it in your web browser here if you prefer.
Introduction
One key focus in the political discourse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the start of June 2023 was China’s youth, as the state-controlled media at every level of the sprawling bureaucracy turned to the commemoration of International Children’s Day, which has fallen on June 1 ever since a Moscow congress of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) first declared the event in November 1949, weeks after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
In many countries in the world, Children’s Days are about raising awareness of the rights and well-being of the young. World Children's Day, which the United Nations designed on November 20 to commemorate the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and which affirms the “fundamental human rights” of all children, is about "promoting international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children's welfare." In China, however, International Children’s Day, often referred to as “6.1” (六一), is about affirming the CCP as the core of a child’s identity, starting them early on the path to loyalty.
In our focus topic this month, we look more closely at how International Children’s Day has been used by the CCP leadership as an opportunity to celebrate its centrality in the lives of all eventually-to-be-adults. But for a sneak peek at the spirit of the day, readers can appreciate the image below, which comes from the Luzhong Morning News (鲁中晨报), a newspaper published for central Shandong province under Dazhong Daily (大众日报), the official CCP mouthpiece in the region.
The image shows a group of preschool-aged children sitting down with an “old grandfather soldier” (老兵爷爷) in Dongying, a prefectural-level city in Shandong province. Behind the group is a bright red backdrop with the yellow hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Chinese Communist Party. The words underneath are the “Joining the Party Pledge” (入党誓词), which all members must learn to recite. The veteran reportedly told the kids: “Children, you are the future flowers of the motherland, you must love our motherland, study hard, and in the future, you will be the pillars of the country."
Before we turn to the CCP’s framing of China’s young, another highlight of June 2023 was Chinese diplomacy and its supposed virtues. June was an eventful month for Chinese diplomacy. China received leaders and delegations from at least 11 countries during the month, many of which were invited to the Summer Davos 2023 in Tianjin (June 27-29), and leaders and the state media made concerted efforts to attract foreign money and stress the point that the country is open for business.
There was continued coverage in state media, including a special feature in People's Weekly, a magazine under the CCP's flagship newspaper, of the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was formally announced during Xi’s official visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013. The emphasis was on the mutual benefits of cooperation with China, which advances what Xi Jinping calls the “community of common destiny for mankind” (人类命运共同体), now a key concept in Chinese foreign policy. China spoke again and again, including in the People’s Weekly feature and in a meeting with German industry representatives (see below), of “enlarging the cake” of modernization (共同做大人类社会现代化的"蛋糕"), which all could divide equitably.
China’s leaders expended great effort in talking down the risks of deeper engagement, a growing concern in the West. On the question of “de-risking” and its implications for China’s development, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated visit in June was that of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived in China on June 17. The US Department of State had announced the visit just three days earlier, following a phone conversation between Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang (秦刚), and had said in a press statement that the visit was intended primarily to stress “the importance of maintaining open lines of communication” in order to “responsibly manage” the relationship.
The question of the lack of openness of Chinese communication and its inherent risks not just for the US-China relationship but for global engagement with the country was of far greater urgency and moment than perhaps anyone understood. By at least the second half of June, even as Chinese diplomats pressed the issue that deeper engagement with China was the only path to security for world development, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was quietly imploding in ways that would become apparent only weeks later, as China’s top legislative body announced that Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang (秦刚), who had been “missing” since the end of June, had been removed from his post.
By the end of July, risk was nearly all anyone could think about as they considered China’s implications, whether economic or geopolitical.
The Foundation is With the People (基础在民间)
But in early June, as international media and observers discussed how the Blinken visit might defuse a tense relationship, Chinese leaders and diplomats tried to push back against the Western discourse of “de-risking” (more below) by hitting below the belt, emphasizing what the CCP has long called “people’s friendship” (人民友好/人民友谊), or “people-to-people” (人与人之间) ties.
This message was conveyed in several articles through June, including one that quoted from Xi Jinping's May 2014 address to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (中国人民对外友好协会), or CPAFFC (well known to be a CCP-led front organization), and stressed the importance of “non-governmental diplomacy” (民间外交): "We must vigorously strengthen cultural exchanges and mutual understanding, and non-governmental diplomacy is the deepest force for advancing cultural exchanges and mutual understanding." The article noted that China already had more than 2,900 sister city relationships and that its “friendship circle is steadily expanding.”
Such “non-governmental” exchanges were also mentioned in the context of an official visit to Europe by Premier Li Qiang (李强), who met in Berlin with German industry representatives. The People’s Daily reported Li Qiang’s remarks to the group on the importance of “understanding and trust between people” in breaking through the risks of “so-called ‘de-risking’ and ‘reducing dependence’ proposed by some countries.” This was a clear reference in this context to the US, despite the fact that de-risking was already by this point a hot topic in Germany and the EU more broadly, with observers calling it an “overarching trend” in China-EU trade.
But the most prominent emphasis on “non-governmental diplomacy” came just one day ahead of Blinken’s trip, as Xi Jinping met with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, number six on the Forbes list of world billionaires. During the June 16 meeting, reportedly prominently on the front page of the People’s Daily the next day, as Mr. Blinken's entourage was en route, Xi Jinping called Gates “the first American friend” he had met in 2023.
The meeting with Gates was, in fact, Xi Jinping’s first meeting in years with such a prominent international business figure, and the framing of the meeting by state media suggests it was intended, like the other examples listed above, to send positive signals to foreign businesses that China’s doors are open, and to emphasize the risks of cutting China out of supply chains as much as the benefits of cooperation (“enlarging the cake,” as Premier Li Qiang put it to German industry in Berlin).
Once again, Xi Jinping outlined the importance of exchanges below the formal diplomatic level, between “our two peoples” — an understated reflection of the dire state of formal diplomatic ties that Blinken would arrive in hours to discuss. "I often say that the foundation of China-US relations lies in the people, and we always place our hope in the American people, hoping the friendship between our two peoples will continue,” Xi told Gates.
The report on the Xi-Gates meeting was framed in the People’s Daily by pieces that reported on the development of new industries, the implementation of priority policies to spur employment, and measures to encourage consumption. The message visually seemed to be about the immense economic benefits China could offer if American businesspeople worked hand-in-hand to deepen “non-governmental” exchanges, meaning that they brought their investment and remained engaged with Chinese industry.
But the message of openness in the People’s Daily was complicated on a deeper level by the strongly ideological tone of the Gates coverage. Xi Jinping’s main point was that business and politics must be separated — that economic cooperation must continue regardless of political disputes. And yet, the entire first half of the report under the photo with Xi Jinping and Gates focused on the accomplishments of the CCP under Xi’s rule. There was a long and jargon-filled interlude about “Chinese-style modernization” (中国式现代化), the “Chinese plan” (中国方案), the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (中华民族伟大复兴), the building of a “community of common destiny for mankind” (人类命运共同体), the Global Development Initiative (全球发展倡议), the Global Security Initiative (全球安全倡议), the Global Civilization Initiative (全球文明倡议), and more.
The Gates report was not a Gates report so much as a self-graded A+ report card for Xi Jinping with the image of the Microsoft co-founder to provide affirmation. It had the unmistakable feel of an internal brag session for Party officials, the primary audience of the People’s Daily, signaling that despite the continued headwinds facing China’s economy, and indeed its diplomacy, Xi was still the man with the plan — or with many plans and many fancy concepts.
A notable contrast to the treatment of the visit in the People’s Daily was a report by the government’s English-language China Daily, intended for a largely foreign audience. It dropped the lengthy description of China’s accomplishments under Xi, making the emphasis on “people-to-people exchanges” even more salient. “President Xi Jinping has stressed the role of people-to-people exchanges in improving China-US relations, which have deteriorated in recent years, and said that he always hopes the friendship between the two peoples will continue,” the article began. It again stressed Xi’s sentiment that “the foundation of Sino-US relations lies among the people,” before mentioning the imminent Blinken visit, something the People’s Daily article had not done:
Gates' visit comes as many foreign business leaders have traveled to China to meet senior Chinese officials in recent months, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, amid tensions between Beijing and Washington.
It also comes ahead of a trip by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China on Sunday amid high expectations to stabilize relations between the world's two largest economies.
The rhetoric about “people-to-people exchanges” and the importance of “non-governmental diplomacy” likely points to growing unease in the leadership about the serious challenges it faces in its formal diplomatic relationships with many countries in the G7 and the European Union, and how this might impact China where it really counts — in trade and technology.
In recent years, China has filled its party-state media outlets with attacks on “American political elites” and others in the US with “ulterior motives” (别有用心者) for the worsening of ties in the West, insisting that they are jealously set against China’s rise. There is little doubt, however, that China’s so-called “wolf warrior” diplomacy — combined with growing domestic repression, Covid-related and other disinformation, and the country’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — has played a key part in antagonizing the G7 and the European Union. There is a deepening sense, even as Western countries remain keen to do business, that China poses a threat both to the global order and to global supply chains.
The situation has been worsened by what one analysis in Foreign Policy termed “the securitization of everything, especially economic policy.” Foreign companies in China have been under much greater scrutiny, and news this year of raids in China on the offices of three major consulting firms that provide business intelligence, including US giant Bain & Company, spooked the foreign business community. Releasing a new report in June on business confidence, the European Chamber of Commerce (ECC) in China wrote: “Faced with growing risks and a more volatile operating environment, European companies have started reviewing their investment and operational strategies, and ensuring their supply chains are fit for more uncertain conditions.”
For China, the ECC report was surely a concerning failure on the “non-governmental diplomacy” front. Just two days before the release of the report, Li had sat down with German business leaders in Berlin to push back against concerns about risk and economic dependence on China. Skirting around higher-level diplomatic setbacks, he suggested that calculations of risk should be left to companies and executives. "Enterprises have the most direct and acute sense of risk and know how to avoid and respond to it,” he said. “The leading role in risk prevention should be returned to enterprises.”
The premier was responding to an emerging consensus between the US and the EU over how to deal with China-related risks and volatilities, seen at the G7 summit back in May, when the communiqué said the countries planned to "coordinate our approach to economic resilience and economic security that is based on diversifying and deepening partnerships and de-risking, not de-coupling.” This compromise vision between the US and the EU, coming in the wake of debates over differing visions of China policy and discussions of “strategic autonomy” vis-à-vis Washington, was in large part about getting Europe on board with measures to restrict China’s access to key technologies.
While the EU and the US were building consensus around the notion of “de-risking” as a set of actions short of “de-coupling,” the Chinese leadership continued to see both as unacceptable attacks. On June 1, the People's Daily ran a commentary by "Zhong Sheng" (钟声), a pen name used by the newspaper’s International Department, that named global hegemonism (霸权主义) on the part of the US and the West as the true risk to the world economy. Just as Premier Li would argue in his meetings in Berlin and Paris three weeks later, the commentary insisted interdependence was inevitable, and that “the world cannot get off the hook [decouple]” (世界脱不了钩). Therefore, it argued, “de-risking” (去风险), was just a polite name for “de-Chinaization” (去中国化).
The formal European response on “de-risking” came on June 20, the day after Li’s sit-down in Berlin, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the European Economic Security Strategy, which implicitly addressed China on such issues as the resilience of supply chains, the physical and cyber security of critical infrastructure, technology security, the leakage of strategic technologies, the weaponization of economic dependencies, economic coercion, and so on. The strategy noted that “the private sector will be an essential partner and is already advanced in its work on de-risking.”
On June 21, Premier Li Qiang turned his hopes again to the private sector, this time in France. During a dinner in Paris with French and Chinese business leaders, he doubled down on dependency as part and parcel of globalization:
In today’s economic globalization, dependency is definite, and it is mutual. We appreciate the French government's opposition to confrontation and ‘decoupling.’ We hope that Chinese and French entrepreneurs will firmly support economic globalization, and be agents of openness, win-win and pragmatic cooperation, working together to maintain the stability and resilience of the supply chain between China and France, and between China and Europe.
Still, China’s efforts at soft diplomacy with the foreign private sector continued to clash with documented risks reported directly from the very business communities Premier Li and others tried to court. Also released in June, the latest survey of businesses conducted by the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China (CCI France Chine) found that despite the lifting of Covid-related health restrictions, many French companies still "deplore suffering from long-term impacts on their activity." More than 30 percent of respondents cited "Sino-american decoupling" as an obstacle to recovery. But substantial proportions also noted geopolitical risks (more than half), falling demand, market access barriers, and "China's declining attractiveness to foreign talent" as problems.
Beyond the rhetoric, China was not making a strong case in practice for its openness, fairness, and security as a destination for foreign capital. And as “non-governmental diplomacy” failed to deliver in Europe, the diplomatic machinery back home was grinding quietly toward a crisis in ways that would highlight China’s risks in spectacular fashion once details, still murky, emerged in July.
The Blinken visit on June 18 was a step forward, perhaps, but did little to soften sentiment on either side. While in Beijing, Blinken met with Xi Jinping, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi (王毅), and Foreign Minister Qin Gang (秦刚). Of these exchanges, the meeting with Qin had been the most diplomatic and the least confrontational. It focused on specific issues like maintaining high-level exchanges, expanding cultural and educational exchanges, and increasing passenger flights. By contrast, the meeting between Blinken and Wang Yi was combative and polemical, at least as viewed through the state media, the latter "demanding" the US desist from hyping the "China threat theory" (中国威胁论), eliminate its "illegal and unilateral sanctions," give up its “repression” of China’s technological development, and stop its “wanton interference in China's internal affairs.”
In the days following Blinken’s departure from China, Foreign Minister Qin Gang made a number of public appearances. On June 25, he met with visiting officials from Vietnam and Sri Lanka, and with Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Andrey Rudenko. From that point on, he was neither seen nor heard from. By July 7, his “unusual” 12-day absence was noted with growing concern. His planned meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell had suddenly been canceled. By mid-July, as China continued in determined silence about the fate of its foreign minister, it had become clear to the world that something was seriously wrong. The government ministry that had been insisting so loudly over the past month on the risks of de-risking was becoming the poster child of Chinese risk.
Focus Topic: “Red Genes”: The Reason Your Child Looks So Much Like the Party?
As mentioned at the outset, International Children's Day on June 1 has long been an opportunity in China for the CCP to impress its virtues on the young, paving the way for the next generation of politically compliant adults. However, treatment of the day in the official party-state media has varied over time, and over the course of the Xi era over the past decade, we can note some significant developments.
On June 1, 2023, International Children's Day was commemorated on the front page of the People’s Daily with prominent coverage just beneath the newspaper’s masthead. As we have explained in the past, the two most important positions of the newspaper, never treated lightly, are sub-masthead space and the space to the right of the masthead, known as the “newspaper eye,” or baoyan (报眼). In this edition, the baoyan is occupied by an announcement of the publication in the journal Seeking Truth of a Xi Jinping speech on “Chinese-style modernization.” For more on developments in the elevation of Xi Jinping in CCP propaganda and the role of Seeking Truth, see Elinor Zhou’s “Xi Jinping, Headline Columnist.”
About 70 percent of the real estate on the June 1 front page is dedicated to International Children's Day, a story about Xi Jinping's visit to Beijing’s Yuying School (育英学校), where he extended a greeting to children across the country. This site was no doubt strategically chosen. The school’s history parallels the history of the communist revolution in China. It was founded in Hebei province in 1948 and enrolled the children of Central Committee members and senior People’s Liberation Army officers. The children of both Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi, for example, attended the school, which was later expanded to include the children of martyrs.
The story of Xi’s visit to Yuying is given a large headline in which the general secretary is the primary focus: “Xi Jinping Emphasizes During Inspection Tour of Beijing Yuying School: [You Must] Strive to Be a Good Children of the New Era with All-Round Development in Morality, Intelligence, Physical Strength, Beauty, and Skill.” Certainly, that is a lot to place on the heads of the young — but we’ll come to the content in a moment.
Two photographs accompany the People’s Daily story, and this is the first time since Xi Jinping took office that he has appeared in the same frame with children in related coverage on June 1. It is also the first time that coverage of International Children’s Day has been given such a high priority in the Xi era. Let’s take a closer look.
Generally in the Xi era, June 1 coverage of International Children’s Day has been given a relatively small space, and in some cases no space at all, on the front page. In 2019, for example, there was no mention of the day, coverage focusing instead on Xi’s speech at a CCP work conference, and on the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Malaysia (in the baoyan).
In coverage on June 1 last year, we begin to see the more prominent treatment of International Children’s Day, but still with much less fanfare. For the first time, coverage on June 1 makes the space under the People’s Daily masthead, the headline noting Xi Jinping’s letter to mark the 40th anniversary of the China National Children’s Center (中国儿童中心), a public charity under the All-China Women's Federation.
But related coverage still occupies only about 20 percent of the total real estate, roughly equal proportions dealing with foreign diplomacy, another Xi Jinping Seeking Truth publication, and (somewhat related) international youth exchanges through the Soong Ching Ling Foundation (宋庆龄基金会).
Coming back to this year’s June 1 front page, we can note that the treatment is far more prominent, the pair of photos stretching across the page. In both, the general secretary stands some distance away from the children and appears to lecture them, emphasizing the sense of Xi Jinping as the teacher imparting wisdom. The shots are also taken from behind the children so that Xi remains the focus, and only the backs of the children’s heads are visible.
Turning back to the past for just a moment, we can note that this prominent photographic treatment on June 1 was seen also at the end of the Hu Jintao era, but the differences are telling. On the front page below, from the June 1, 2012, edition of the People’s Daily, there are large images of Hu Jintao with children, but these are not the stiff and faceless child soldiers of the 2023 page. The scene is boisterous and full of life, Hu Jintao sitting at left at a craft table. The faces of the children are visible and eager.
But the biggest difference between the 2012 and 2023 pages lies in the overtly ideological nature of the coverage in the Xi era. Sure, Hu Jintao’s children, and Hu himself, are wearing red scarves (红领巾), the neckerchiefs worn by the Communist young pioneers in China, and once in the Soviet Union. But as we shall see, the language and emphasis are markedly different.
On the eve of International Children’s Day in 2013, the first of Xi Jinping’s time in office, the treatment seemed to follow that in the time of Xi’s predecessor. On the front page of the May 31, 2013, edition of the People’s Daily, the general secretary is pictured hand-in-hand with children in one photograph, while in the other a child ties on his red scarf. In this photograph, the chubby-faced Xi Jinping looks distinctly childlike. But by 2016, as the 19th National Congress drew nearer and he was formally designated as the CCP’s “core” leader, such playfulness had vanished.
The contrasts in terms of substance between the 2012 Hu Jintao front page and the 2023 Xi Jinping front page are in many ways astonishing, and we encourage readers to have a closer look. Consider, for example, the “striving” of the Xi headline, which emphasizes expectations for “children of the New Era,” against the Hu Jintao headline, which reads: “Living Happily and Growing Healthily Under the Sunshine of the Motherland” (在祖国阳光哺育下快乐生活健康成长). The only time the Party is mentioned at all in the Hu Jintao report is when “Grandpa Hu” (胡爷爷) tells the children, after a non-ideological rundown of the activities and exchanges of the day: “The hope of the Party and the government is to allow all children live in happiness and joy.”
When Hu tells the children in 2012 that “International Children’s Day is a holiday for all little friends,” it is tempting — though this may be New Era nostalgia — to actually believe him.
In this year’s front-page report on International Children’s Day, the CCP is everywhere, and the children seem to disappear — like their no longer visible faces — under the burden of obligation. These obligations are spelled out in the red bullet points on the left-hand side of the article. Children must “live up to their parent’s expectations, and the expectations of the Party and the people.” They must “remember the care of the Party, carry on the red traditions, inherit the red genes, listen to the Party from childhood, follow the Party, and aspire to become talent for the Party, being dedicated to the country.” The phrase “red genes,” or hongse jiyin (红色基因), has become one of the ideological hallmarks of Xi Jinping’s New Era. It refers to the revolutionary spirit and history of the CCP as a kind of political and cultural inheritance, the celebration of which is a means of consolidating the Party’s position within the national identity — thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of the regime (more in the CMP Dictionary).
Only at the bottom of the list is the health and well-being of children raised at all. And immediately after, Xi Jinping, China’s parent-in-chief, scoops up the glory for the leadership. “I believe that, with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the remarkable advantages of the socialist system, children of all ethnic groups living in the big family of the Chinese nation will be happier and happier, and will certainly have a better future.”
As for teachers, the June 1 report makes clear that their duty is to “educate the young for the Party” (为党育人). Subtle but unmistakable in the second photo accompanying the report are the red characters to the left and right of the Chinese national flag above the classroom blackboard, which read: “Follow the Dream / Study Well” (好好追梦, 好好学习). The latter part of this phrase, “study well,” is widely known in the New Era as a homophone that can mean “study Xi well,” the general secretary’s surname being the character for “study” or “practice” (习).
On June 4, a day on which China’s leaders conscientiously avoided any mention of the brutal crackdown on protesting youth in 1989 (more on the media side of the Tiananmen Massacre from CMP here), the education section of People's Daily published an article by a Chinese kindergarten teacher titled, “Red Genes Infuse the Hearts of the Children” (红色基因浸润童心), which dealt with how to integrate “red culture” into daily teaching and practice at school: “Patriotic education in kindergartens should focus on immersion experiences and emotional enlightenment . . . . becoming one with day-to-day life in the kindergarten, and penetrating through language, art, health, science, society, and other educational activities.”
By the end of June, however, the leadership had sent a clear message that simply conveying the spirit of “red gene” infusion in the classroom was insufficient. On June 26, the draft of a new patriotic education law was submitted to the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, providing a legal basis for mandating "patriotic activities" for the entire country, with a focus on children and youth (More from CMP). At the heart of so-called “patriotic education” (爱国主义教育) was adherence to CCP ideology, including “Xi Jinping Thought,” and an emphasis on the history of the Party. This was, first and foremost, political education.
The introduction of the draft law drew criticism abroad, and whispers of dissent at home. Yan Xuetong (阎学通), dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, remarked that legally binding and compulsory patriotic education should be unnecessary. “Patriotism is a heartfelt emotion that should arise spontaneously rather than as a result of indoctrination,” he said.
June Surprises: Calling a Rat a Duck
While dining in the school canteen on June 1, a university student in the city of Nanchang in China’s southern Jiangxi province found what looked very much like a rat’s head in a dish with rice. The student snapped a video of the food and posted it to social media. The case quickly went viral, provoking public outrage over unsanitary conditions at the canteen, and sparking lively online discussion about food safety and college canteen management more generally.
In an effort to quell the controversy, the school issued a statement on June 3 publicly responding to the original post. The school denied that the object shown in the video was a rat’s head, insisting that it was instead a section of a duck’s neck, which is commonly eaten in China. At around the same time, officials from the local Market Regulation Bureau issued a statement claiming that they had investigated the case and confirmed that the object in question was indeed a bit of duck’s neck.
The case grew even stranger when the student who had posted the original video went public with his own statement matching the findings of local authorities. The object he had found in his canteen food, he said, was in fact a bit of duck’s neck.
Internet users found the conclusion from local authorities entirely unconvincing and believed that the sudden retraction from the student was likely the result of intimidation. Everyone had seen the video footage the student had uploaded, in which whiskers and teeth were clearly visible on the object in question.
Facing immense public pressure, Jiangxi provincial authorities followed up with an inter-departmental joint investigation of the incident. On June 17, the investigation team issued their findings, rejecting the conclusions of the university and the local Market Regulation Bureau. They said in their notice that “the foreign object was not a duck’s neck,” but had been “determined to be the head of a rodent-like toothed animal.”
The reversal of the official line once again provoked outrage on social media, and engendered a new hashtag, “calling a rat a duck” (指鼠为鸭), a play on the popular Chinese idiom “calling a stag a horse” (指鹿为马), which implies a deliberate attempt to distort right and wrong. The saying was used across social media to voice dissatisfaction with the official cover-up of the incident, and the local government’s trifling attitude toward public health.
The affair prompted the creation of many memes to ridicule the university and local authorities. Some netizens even designed a toy combining rat and duck features, which was briefly up for sale on the e-commerce site Taobao before being removed on the grounds of malicious marketing.
The Hot and the Cold
About the Scale:
According to the discourse scale developed by CMP in 2016, based on a historical analysis of keywords appearing in the China Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper, we define a six-tier system of discourse intensity based on the total number of appearances of a given discourse term on a per article basis for the full year in the paper. The scale is as follows:
In 2021, CMP adjusted its classification method for CCP discourse, determining the intensity (热度) of Party terminologies according to the absolute number of articles including those terms in the People's Daily newspaper. Previously, CMP used a proportional method, which looked at the number of articles including a particular catchphrase (提法) as a ratio of total articles in the newspaper over a given period. Our monthly classification standard, based on the six-level scale created in 2016, is as follows:
The key terms appearing at the top of the CMP scale remained largely unchanged in June compared to the previous month. Tier 1 had the exact same terms as May. No new terms were added to Tier 2, but several dropped out with about half the number of mentions. These included "major changes not seen in a century" (百年未有之大变局), “national security” (国家安全), and “independent innovation” (自主创新). This was likely due to the re-focus on foreign relations in June. For the same reason, terms such as “protectionism” (保护主义) and “unilateralism” (单边主义) heated up after cooling down for two months, moving up to Tier 2 from Tier 3. For a quick look at how terms like “protectionism” related in the official discourse to the issue of “de-risking” discussed at the outset of this report, readers can check out this search thread for June, in which the top result — among scores of results from state media and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — is a piece in the Economic Daily that begins: “Lately, 'de-risking’ has replaced ‘de-coupling’ as the new buzzword for China policy frequently hyped by Western politicians.”
As June opened with the Party’s renewed focus on International Children's Day, terms related to patriotic education advanced. “Red genes” (红色基因), for example, rose to Tier 4 from Tier 5. Accordingly, terms related to party building and discipline, such as “self-revolution” (自我革命), “four malfeasances” (四风), and “anti-corruption” (反腐败) also heated up. Among these, “anti-corruption” was particularly noteworthy. It was found not in discussions of internal CCP governance, but also in the context of diplomatic engagements. “Anti-corruption” was mentioned in China’s joint statement with Honduras as well as during Xi’s meeting with Mongolian Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene. Point Five of the joint statement read:
The two sides agreed that the fundamental starting and ending point for the development of China-Honduras relations is to enhance people's well-being and promote common development, and [the sides] agreed to enhance exchanges between the government, legislature, political parties and localities, strengthen mutual understanding of experiences in governance and anti-corruption, adhere to the people-centered development ideology, and join hands to push forward the modernization and construction of their respective countries.
China’s new Foreign Relations Law, passed in June, also includes clauses on international cooperation in the area of anti-corruption.
A number of terms related to domestic development also showed stronger performance in June. These included the “Four Comprehensives (四个全面), “financial risk” (金融风险 ), and “stabilizing expectations” (稳预期). The first term points to the priorities of achieving a moderately prosperous society and comprehensively deepening reform as well as strict governance of the Party and the nation (according to law). The latter two terms point to a cautious attitude toward the economic situation.
Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, one of Xi Jinping’s key catchphrases for economic policy, “
“new development stage” (新发展阶段), underperformed significantly. The phrase, which refers to what is sold as Xi’s strategic grasp of domestic and international factors in plotting China’s forward course (and further “victories” for the Party), dropped from Tier 3 to Tier 5. While we should never read too much into what could be short-term ebbs and flows in the discourse, it is tempting to imagine that given the serious “current dynamics” facing China’s economy, now is not the time to turn up the volume on the victory talk. Then again, reality has never seemed to meaningfully discourage the grandiose discourse of Xi Jinping’s CCP.
“Xiong’an” (雄安), a reference to Xi Jinping’s flagship project to build a "city of the future" in north China's Hebei province, also dropped significantly in June, from Tier 4 down to Tier 5, with only half as many mentions as in May. This followed three consecutive months during which the word steadily heated up. Perhaps now is not the time to focus on extravagant ambitions.
In a continued sign of the retreat of Covid-related terminologies, as China moves on from the pandemic, the phrase “epidemic prevention and control” (疫情防控) continued to drop. The term, which for two years dominated at the top of the CMP scale, and which held steady in Tier 2 for the first four months of 2023, languished in Tier 4 with just 16 mentions.
As was the case in May, the various permutations of Xi Jinping’s banner phrase for specific policy areas continued to underperform in June. Only Xi’s catchphrase for environmental policy and sustainable development, “Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization” (习近平生态文明思想), advanced for the month, rising by nearly 50 percent and holding steady in Tier 3. “Xi Jinping Thought on Rule of Law” (习近平法治思想) was largely unchanged in Tier 4. “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” (习近平外交思想) made barely a peep down in Tier 5 — during a month in which diplomacy was a central concern. But the weakest phrases by far were “Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military” (习近平强军思想), the general secretary’s signature national security phrase, and “Xi Jinping Economic Thought” (习近平经济思想). Both bottomed out in Tier 6, with only three mentions each.
The “Two Establishes” (两个确立), since late 2021 a crucial phrase signaling the legitimacy of Xi Jinping’s rule, remained in Tier 2, as did the “Two Safeguards” (两个维护), which is similar in meaning. The first phrase refers to 1) the establishment of Xi as the “core” of the CCP leadership, and 2) the establishment of Xi’s ideas (his banner phrase, in other words) as the leading thought of the Party. The second phrase refers to the need to protect 1) Xi’s “core” status and 2) the authority and centralized leadership of the Party.
The following table shows the key terms we reviewed for the month of June 2023 and how they rated on our scale:
The Centrality Index
Xi Jinping was mentioned in 655 articles in the People’s Daily in June 2023, nearly level with the previous month. This placed him at the top of the CMP scale in Tier 1, where he has held strong for well over two years. He was far and away the most mentioned leader in the CCP’s Central Committee. However, one key difference in June 2023 was the solid presence of Premier Li Qiang (李强) in Tier 2 with 53 mentions. Generally, over the past two years, Tier 2 has remained vacant, a visual expression of the huge gap separating Xi Jinping from the remaining members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). June marked the first time in several years that another leader appeared in Tier 2 outside of March reports, corresponding to the annual National People’s Congress — which is often a time for the premier to shine.
Li’s exceptionally strong presence was due to a busy run of both domestic affairs and diplomatic engagements. On top of routine government matters, Li made an inspection tour to Liaoning province in early June, during which he stressed the need to improve the business environment and facilitate the revitalization of the economy in Northeast China. During the second half of the month, Li visited Germany (see discussion above on “de-risking”), where he held the seventh round of German-Chinese government consultations. He followed with a trip to France, where he attended the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact and delivered a speech.
Li’s trip to Europe was heavily covered by the People’s Daily. Of his 53 mentions, 17 pertained to the trip, including six front-page appearances. Also in June, Li met with foreign leaders from Honduras, Palestine, Pakistan, Vietnam, New Zealand, Mongolia, and Barbados. The latter four were invited to Tianjin for the Summer Davos 2023, where Li delivered the keynote speech.
Zhao Leji (赵乐际), chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and the third-ranking member of the PSC, was solidly in Tier 3 in June with 27 mentions, a significant boost compared to May 2023. Zhao’s strong performance was due in part to a busy schedule of diplomatic engagements. Zhao met in June with visiting delegations from 10 countries. Zhao’s remaining mentions had to do with personnel appointments and legislation, the day-to-day work of the NPC chairman. Personnel appointments included arrangements for Hong Kong and Macau. On the legislative front, Zhao was on hand for the passing of China’s new Foreign Relations Law and the review of the draft of the Patriotic Education Law. Li also announced a decision on organizational changes to create working committees within the NPC Standing Committee.
Wang Yi (王毅), China’s top diplomat as director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs — and by July to once again become the country’s foreign minister as Qin Gang was removed — managed to remain in Tier 3 for a fourth consecutive month, but only just. He accompanied Xi Jinping on nine diplomatic engagements, and he personally spoke with leaders and delegations from seven countries and the United Nations.
Wang’s meetings included the long-awaited sit-down with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (US readout) on June 19, which was postponed in February due to the spy balloon incident. Wang met with Blinken himself and also accompanied Xi during the general secretary’s talks with Blinken. These two meetings varied notably in both talking points and tone. Beyond diplomatic engagements, one of Wang's mentions was related to the passage of the Foreign Relations Law. On June 29, the People’s Daily published a commentary from Wang with the formidable headline, “Implementing the Foreign Relations Law, Providing Strong Rule of Law Guarantees for Great Power Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” (贯彻对外关系法，为新时代中国特色大国外交提供坚强法治保障), which emphasized the importance of “external work” for the realization of “Chinese-style modernization” and the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Foreign Leaders
All foreign leaders were arrayed across Tiers 4-6 in June 2023. The European visit by Premier Li Qiang, which had strong coverage in the People’s Daily, sent French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the top of the pack, with 12 mentions each. Li’s meetings with both leaders made it to the front page of the CCP’s flagship newspaper.
It was not surprising to see the Scholz and Macron meetings featured prominently in the People’s Daily. For the past few months, China has expended great effort to win over America's European allies and push back against what it sees as a concerted push to cut off the country’s access to top technologies and contain its rise. Macron has warmed up in China’s official discourse ever since his visit to China in April, and he and Scholz have both been leveraged by party-state media to endorse official CCP talking points in favor of multilateralism (Chinese-style) and against “de-coupling” and later “de-risking.” During Premier Li’s visit to Berlin, state media paraphrased Scholz as saying that “Germany welcomes China's development and prosperity, and opposes any form of decoupling — de-risking does not mean ‘de-Chinifying.’” It should be noted that Chinese party-state media, including the People’s Daily, can have a cavalier attitude toward the proper quoting of sources. Direct quotes are not always included in quotation marks, and apparent direct quotes can often be paraphrases — or even outright inventions.
With 10 mentions in June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken followed the German and French leaders. His relatively strong performance stemmed from his long-awaited visit to China on June 17-19. In Beijing, Blinken met with Xi Jinping, Wang Yi, and Foreign Minister Qin Gang. The consensus publicly on the US side emerging from the meetings seemed to be that they were a step in the right direction toward putting relations back on track, but it is certainly too early to tell — and it remains to be seen what impact tremors within China’s foreign ministry might have. In coverage of the exchange between Blinken and Qin Gang that was apparently deleted in Chinese from the MFA website in late July, but restored by July 30 under “Ministerial Activities,” the foreign ministry described the meetings as “open, insightful and constructive.”
However, China has maintained a fiercely critical view that tensions in the relationship have been caused unilaterally by US misperceptions of China, and by erroneous US foreign policy. US President Joe Biden was mentioned twice in the People’s Daily in the context of the Blinken talks, with both Xi Jinping and Qin Gang implying that Biden is to blame for the deterioration of US-China relations owing to his failure to live up to the commitments reached in Bali back in November 2022. In addition to these mentions, Biden had two others in the paper in June, neither positive. The first of these appeared in the June 17 edition, as MFA spokesperson Wang Wenbin was quoted as saying to foreign reporters the previous day that, “China once again urges the United States to put President Biden's active statements into practice.” The second came 10 days later, as MFA spokesperson Mao Ning was quoted as saying that “the US must immediately stop politicizing, instrumentalizing and weaponizing the issue of the origins of Covid-19.”
These barbed comments were not atypical of China’s foreign ministry, which in recent years has used press conferences as an opportunity to toss cherry bombs into the international discourse — often to win points at home with fervently nationalistic segments of the online audience. But neither were they a sign of easing tensions.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh was mentioned in 11 articles in June, stemming from his attendance at the Summer Davos. During his time in China, Pham was able to meet with central leaders, including Xi Jinping. Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, also made the trip and had nine mentions for the month. Just ahead of Nguyen were New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkens, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Honduran President Xiomara Castro, all receiving 10 mentions on the back of coverage of their trips to China. For his part, Hipkins signed a joint statement with China on a comprehensive strategic partnership, leaving the country with a series of economic and trade deals. Castro is the first Honduran president to visit China since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Honduras back in March. She also signed a joint statement in which she affirmed the “one China principle” (一个中国原则), described as the foundation of their re-establishment of diplomatic relations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was down in the freezing Siberian cold of Tier 6 in June, with just three mentions. All of these were associated with the Wagner Group rebellion that began on June 23, and without this news, the leader might have disappeared altogether. On June 25, the People's Daily published a brief about Putin's televised speech the day before, in which he claimed that Russia had suffered an act of “treason.” The brief contained no further details about Wagner’s actions, save for a single sentence stating that “a criminal case has been opened against the founder of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military group, for allegedly fomenting an armed rebellion.” Two articles followed the next day in the People’s Daily, including a brief update on the proposal by Belarusian President Lukashenko, and comments from the foreign ministry. But coverage in China’s party-state media remained cautious, and perhaps even could be characterized as distanced. There were only short and factual statements, without any explicit expression of support for Putin.
The remaining national leaders appearing in the People’s Daily generally had just one or two mentions. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was mentioned once in an article written by China's Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs, Li Hui (李辉). The article was a reflection on Li’s meeting with Zelensky during his visit to Ukraine in May. Heavy with official CCP jargon, it reiterated China’s notion of the proper path toward a political resolution to what it called the “Ukraine crisis.” As Li Hui’s largely ineffectual visit to Europe fades, one more forgotten sign of China’s diplomatic setbacks, it is possible Zelensky could once again drop entirely out of the People’s Daily in the coming months.
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Great as always.