CMP Discourse Tracker #02
A month-to-month reading of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship People's Daily newspaper and key discourse trends – with crucial context. Here is the roundup for July 2024.
Our free subscribers will have access to this edition of the Tracker through to the end of Topic 1, after which it is for paid subscribers only. If you feel left out — our apologies — and please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription.
Dear Subscribers:
In my letter to the last edition of the CMP Discourse Tracker, I talked about “framing words,” or tifa (提法), and how these specialized political terminologies are distinct from simple keywords. Before we jump into China’s official media discourse for July 2024, a colorful example of this important distinction.
Since 2014, Xi Jinping has used the phrase “positive energy” to talk about moderating critical coverage in the media. In the CMP Dictionary, we explain that the relevant political phrases are actually “transmit positive energy to society” (传播社会正能量) and “inject positive energy” (注入正能量). These are tifa that can be found consistently in the official media, like this recent report on indoctrinating young children with the “red culture” of the CCP.
By contrast, note the campaign billboard below, which is from a local campaign event during Taiwan’s January presidential election. The billboard shows now President William Lai and a Legislative Yuan candidate topped by the phrase: “Positive Energy to Support Taiwan” (正能量挺台灣). In this case, “positive energy” is used in the popular sense, in the casual, share-the-love manner of this recent Threads post calling on Taiwanese to generate buzz for an underrated restaurant.
It’s a playful illustration of an important concept — that tifa are particular, and need to be carefully treated as such in researching CCP discourse.
On to our July analysis.
David L. Bandurski /CMP Director
Chu Yang / Editor, Discourse Tracker
TOPPING THE AGENDA
Topic 1
The Third Plenum
Traditionally, the Third Plenum has been an occasion for the CCP Politburo and the Central Committee to unveil major policy initiatives. Several have become major moments for the party and the country. In 1978, the third plenum of the 11th CCP Central Committee resolved the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and introduced the monumental economic reform and opening-up policy of Deng Xiaoping.
In July 2024, the Third Plenum of the 20th CCP Central Committee was held in Beijing. As a meeting that would signal the direction of China’s social and economic policies for the next five years and beyond, the Plenum drew great attention from China watchers. It also received spotlight treatment from China's state media — after all, leading public opinion according to political priorities and the political calendar is the definition of their job.
While foreign media coverage tended to stress the point that there were few if any concrete policies emerging from the Plenum, the keyword on the party agenda was clear: reform. Mentions of the phrase “reform and opening” (改革开放) tripled for the month in the People’s Daily, with a total of 187 articles using the term — rating it Tier 1 on the CMP’s 1-6 scale for keyword intensity (热度) in the CCP’s flagship newspaper (see below). Another related buzzword, “comprehensively deepening reform” (全面深化改革), jumped from 79 to 272, rocketing into Tier 1, indicating prominence within the discourse.
To understand CCP discourse in July 2024, both “reform and opening” and “comprehensively deepening reform” are crucial political terminologies. The first, as we said above, is Deng's chief political legacy. The second, meanwhile, is a policy phrase closely associated with Xi Jinping.
In 2013, at the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee, the first key plenary session over which Xi presided as General Secretary, the Party passed a hefty document called (hold on to your seats): Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on a Number of Important Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform (中共中央关于全面深化改革若干重大问题的决定). The 22,000-word document covered a lot of ground, but the upshot was that Xi Jinping’s leadership had ushered in a “New Era” distinct from that of his predecessors.
As the first Third Plenum Decision showed, Xi would waste no time in making his political mark. While outside of China’s political culture we can tend to look at such decisions and pronouncements with an eye to real advancements, concrete plans and even breakthroughs, this is not the main yardstick applied by the CCP. Of course there are programmatic elements. But as the party defines the old and the new, the focus is always on manufacturing the new myth for a new leader. This long-standing character of politics within the CCP has been especially pronounced in Xi’s time.
Xi, you might protest, is not a new leader. Indeed. But the challenge of the authoritarian leader is to manufacture novelty. Though Xi may not be a new leader, he must nevertheless always seem so. With each five-year cycle — from the 18th to the 19th and 20th CCP Congresses, the demand for apparent novelty rises. How else can legitimacy at the top be established without an electoral mandate, and without, in these days of economic retreat, the constant appeal to rapidly rising GDP? Extravagant discourse, mobilized through a controlled media system, must do the heavy lifting. As the scholar Christian Sorace has written: “In lieu of an electoral mandate to rule, Party legitimacy requires the constant production, exaltation, and acclamation of glory.”
In building the myths and narratives of legitimacy, CCP leaders generally seek to establish continuity, connecting their gestures and plans to the political symbols of their predecessors while distinguishing and elevating themselves. In our May 2023 discourse report in cooperation with Sinocism, we analyzed how Xi attempted to build his political legacy around his distinctive push for special zone development with projects like the Xiong’an New Area and a new Shaanxi development corridor. These projects cannot simply be viewed as strategic responses to economic development needs, but must be considered also (or even primarily) as moves to emulate Deng Xiaoping’s creation of special economic zones (SEZs) in the 1980s. Back in March, during the annual “Two Sessions,” including the National People’s Congress, the official Xinhua News Agency published an article with the headline phrase “Xi Jinping the reformer.” This was an unmistakable effort to draw direct comparisons between Xi and Deng. In fact, the article said precisely that:
Xi is regarded as another outstanding reformer in the country after Deng Xiaoping.
On July 18, the front page of the People’s Daily ran a commentary by “Zhong Yin” (仲音), an official pen name that is a homophone for “important voice” (重要声音), marking it as a reflection of the prevailing view in the central leadership. The headline of the commentary worked in the same way to build continuity between Deng’s legacy and the future under Xi’s leadership: “Carrying Forward the Great Spirit of Reform and Opening Up and Further Promoting the Comprehensive Deepening of Reform” (弘扬伟大改革开放精神 进一步推进全面深化改革).
The July 2024 focus in official party-state media on reform, anticipating the 120th anniversary in August of the birth of Deng Xiaoping, in fact had little to do with Deng at all. We have a popular phrase in the West attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, about standing on the shoulders of giants. In the Chinese political context, the point is to put oneself on the right set of shoulders to accentuate, or exaggerate, one’s own enormity.
In July, before the start of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee, the People's Daily ran a column entitled “New Thoughts to Lead Reform and Opening Up in the New Era” (新思想引领新时代改革开放), which summarized the initiatives and achievements in different aspects during Xi’s period, 10 of which appeared on the front page. The headlines ran as follows:
On the front page of the July 22 edition, all space was dedicated to the communique of the Plenum, Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Promoting Chinese-style Modernisation (Full-text in Chinese here). The second term in this title, “Chinese-style modernization,” sometimes also officially translated into English as “the Chinese path to modernization,” is, just as suggested above, a glory proposition, one manufactured in the year leading up to the 20th National Congress of the CCP in October 2022. It essentially re-packages the idea of Chinese exceptionalism, that under Xi Jinping the country has achieved a new model of global development distinct from that of the West [more in the CMP Dictionary].
Although the Decision mentioned several specific initiatives, the most noteworthy message was stressed in another Zhong Yin commentary, “Adhering to and Implementing the ‘Two Unshakables’” (坚持和落实“两个毫不动摇”), published on the front page of the July 30 edition of the People’s Daily. Another stiff CCP terminology, the “Two Unshakables” likely points in this context to an undercurrent of urgency over the state of the economy. It refers to unflagging support for the development of the state-run sector on the one hand, and support for the private sector on the other. Considering the current state of China's economy, it seems clear the central leadership hopes to inspire confidence in the market and investors. Whether this will be effective is another question.
Towards the end of the month, in order to reflect various aspects of the communique, the front page of the People's Daily ran a column for five consecutive days called, “Anchoring Modernization, Deepening Reforms” (锚定现代化 改革再深化). Installments dealt with plans for Xiong'an, the green economy, and ecological protection, all of which are closely associated in the official discourse with Xi and his political legacy. These areas are to be designated as pivotal sectors for future policy support.
While there seem to have been no breakthroughs arising from the Plenum in terms of concrete initiatives, economic issues are clearly dominating the attention of the central leadership. In July, several economic-related meetings chaired by central leaders made the front page of the CCP’s flagship newspaper.
On July 9, Premier Li Qiang (李强) met with experts and entrepreneurs on the current economic situation. On July 22, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which includes many prominent business people, held a session to analyze the macroeconomic situation in the first half of the year. Wang Huning (王沪宁) attended the meeting and delivered a speech in which he seems, based on the Xinhua readout, to mostly have repeated platitudes about the need to study the “spirit” of Xi’s speech to the Plenum, and the “new ideas, new perspectives, and new assertions” (新思想、新观点、新论断) the general secretary had made on the “comprehensive deepening of reforms.” Once again, the unrelenting talk of newness can clue us in to the mobilization of glory propositions.
On the front page of the July 31 edition, almost the entire page was devoted to economic issues, and to the related issue of remedying “formalism” (形式主义) — essentially, the emphasis on pointless procedures over substantive work — in order to reduce burdens on the grassroots. This has been a constant theme in the state media this year, one we dealt with in greater detail in “Fingertip Formalism,” on the immense burden and waste created by digital governance efficiency efforts. (Since this bulletin is all about CCP discourse, we should note that Party-speak is itself a prime example of “formalism,” one the party, despite its best efforts, is incapable of eradicating.)
On the same page on July 31, the Central Committee met with non-party members on the current economic situation and economic work in the second half of the year, a meeting that was chaired by Xi Jinping. Xi emphasized, according to the Xinhua readout, that "the current economic development in China has encountered some difficulties and problems, which are problems in development and transformation and can be completely overcome with effort."