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Posted via Cindy Carter | July 19, 2024
The recently concluded Third Plenum of the PCC resulted in a final communiqué in which the existing economic, geopolitical and ideological dangers were recognized, as well as the need to continue reforming the system, although few details were (yet) provided. Nonetheless, propagandists have promoted “Xi as a reshaper” narratives in Chinese state media. Some claims, adding that Xi visited the “cradle of remodeling” village of Xiaogang in Anhui province in 1978, have sparked disbelief on Chinese social media. The rejection of such glorifications of Xi’s reshaping symbol appears to have led to the removal of at least one comment in state media and censorship in the form of deleted comments and extensive filtering of comments on social media posts.
On Monday, the opening day of the Third Plenum, state media heavily promoted “Xi the Reformer,” a 10,000-word remark through state-run Xinhua media that praised Xi Jinping as a wonderful reformer on par with Deng Xiaoping. From Josephine Ma to the South China Morning Post:
The commentary, titled “Xi Jinping the Reformer,” states that [Xi] are the 2,000 “reform measures” implemented over the past decade. These ranged from poverty eradication, urban-rural progress and the fight against corruption, to supporting business and innovation, to a “green revolution”, a word that refers to China’s rise to prominence as leader in new power automobiles and other green technologies.
[…] He also spoke at length with Xi to Supreme Leader Deng, saying that they were both carrying out the project to achieve China’s modernization. However, he also pointed out differences, saying Xi’s reforms were more than economic and aimed at turning “the other Chinese into a new era” full of national pride. [Fountain]
The comment, which appears to have been first published in early March at the legislative and consultative meetings of the two sessions, was reportedly removed from Xinhua’s official online page and is no longer available on Baidu this week. Some have speculated that the comment might simply have been removed due to its exaggerated claims and the potential for generating backlash among already skeptical social media users.
A hagiographic video heavily promoted through Xinhua, “Leading a New Journey,” also sparked a huge backlash after it was posted on Weibo on July 15. The comments segment below the video was flooded with skeptical responses to his claims that a young Xi Jinping had visited Xiaogang. village in Anhui Province in 1978, long before the village decollectivization experiment was publicly revealed in 1980, to conduct studies on agricultural reform. While the video was not deleted, it was subject to comment filtering and mass deletion of critical comments. complaint on foreign social media sites such as X. CDT editors have compiled some of X’s Chinese comments, some of which are translated below:
@whyyoutouzhele: Why not simply claim that Xi Jinping invented and implemented the system of family duties?
@ThomasYoung198: Since you don’t have a wonderful reforming record to boast about, let’s make it up!
@speedupxjp: In the beginning, Xi Jinping created the Heavens and the Earth.
@wuyuehua1776: It was only in a report through Xinhua News on June 28, 1980 that we learned that [Xiaogang’s] bumper harvest was due to decollectivization. Before that, the secret contract and the resolution to divide the land were a well-kept secret. So what might Xi have investigated in late 1978?
@lanniaoyouke: Even before the effects of the harvest were available under the formula of duty of the circle of relatives, he went to conduct studies on them.
@Pledgeme2414475: He traveled back in time. [Chinese]
It is not entirely unlikely that Xi, as the son of a recently rehabilitated senior cadre and one of the Party’s most prominent voices for reform, stopped at Xiaogang early on, but state media reports on the scale of Xi’s inspection of Xiaogang village in 2016 did. Not to mention it was supposedly a return stopover. Xiaogang’s history as the “cradle of reform” is deeply rooted in the history of the CPP. Xiaogang houses a museum committed to its role in agricultural reform, and the village’s history is cited in state media. According to the well-known story, an organization of 18 farmers from Xiaogang – having noticed that their village suffered greatly during the Great Famine of the late 1950s and early 1960s, a crisis they blamed on the rigid communal formula – signed a secret contract to decollectivize and subdivide their usual agricultural lands in an effort to improve harvests and provide more food for themselves and their families. This secret contract would pave the way for the “domestic contractual duties formula”, a key component of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening-up policy.
Foreign Policy’s James Palmer reported on the inconsistencies inherent in the “Leading a New Journey” video and discussed the reasons why Party propagandists and state media prefer to burnish Xi’s reformist symbol in the run-up to the Third Plenum :
Xi has already claimed that he went as a student to Anhui to examine the village that brought the aforementioned formula, a set of post-China reforms that moved the country away from collectivization. But as political scientist Joshua Eisenman has shown, the story of the local formula in Anhui is largely a propaganda invention that Deng used to implement his political changes; Xi’s vacation is probably made up too. Now, the documentary says, Xi has “taken up the baton of history” to push reforms.
The drum is being beaten so loudly because the party and the general public are concerned that Xi has abandoned Deng’s reform and opening-up plans, returning to the top-down mentality and Maoist concepts of the pre-reform era. Deng’s efforts boosted life in China, and the idea that his strategy could be reversed scares most people.
[…] State media thus seeks to reassure the public that Xi is determined to reform. The economic buzzword this year is “new quality productive forces,” or the use of generation to produce breakthroughs that will give China critical geopolitical benefits over other powers. Along with Xi’s historically Marxist emphasis on production – and the abandonment of past attempts to steer China’s economy towards intake rather than production – the Third Plenum announcements will most likely focus on generation-oriented expansion. [Source]
Another Xinhua article published this week, “Xiaogang’s Dream Is Also the Dream of the Vast Majority of Farmers,” recalls Xi’s April 2016 trip to Xiaogang village, where he met with Yan Jinchang, one of the farmers who signed the mythical secret contract. so many years ago.
On Thursday, at the end of the Third Plenary Session, state media broadcast the final statement of the meetings. As expected, the document reiterated the Party’s position on various demanding situations and ideological issues, and focused on the general direction of the policies rather than the main points of their implementation. Bill Bishop’s first investigation of Sinocism noted that the document did not indicate any significant replacement, of course: “The statement highlights the progress made in the overall deepening of reform since the Third Plenary in 2013 and once back makes it clear that the leaders believe are on the right path. In his Substack Tracking People’s Daily newsletter, Manoj Kewalramani called the “strong help for China’s political direction and the leadership of Xi Jinping. ” “very positive evaluation of the good fortune and achievements” of the reformist cadres since the new era. “
CDT editors who followed online censorship during the plenum noted that Weibo hashtags similar to those on the occasion were tightly controlled and search effects were limited to content posted through verified users. In addition, comment filtering has been enabled for Weibo accounts such as People’s Daily, CCTV News, and Xinhua News Agency. Some comments on social media in reaction to the final communiqué criticized it as lukewarm or meaningless, devoid of content or even as a sign that China had entered an “era of waste history. “A Chinese-language commentary on X described it as “a draft in the age of garbage. “
Although Xi Jinping chaired the final meeting of the Third Plenum and the presentation of the communiqué, his lack of prior visibility in the plenary led to unsubstantiated rumors of political infighting, illness, or even a serious physical problem such as a stroke. Professor Li reported that after a spike in Baidu searches for “stroke,” the platform appeared to have issued a search ban for the term. Phil Cunningham’s CCTV Follies noted that at the plenary session, state broadcaster CCTV addressed Xi’s low profile by broadcasting a variety of content beyond “Xi’s Great,” adding perennial news reports such as “Xi’s Time. ” , “Xi’s Vision”, “Xi’s Focus” and “Xi’s Story”.
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