Editor’s note for Monday, November 9, 2020

My thoughts today:

The implications of a Biden presidency on Sino-global relations is the theme of our NEXTChina online conference happening this week. This Wednesday and Thursday, November 11–12, the event will feature some of the world’s leading thinkers on China policy speaking on a variety of relevant topics. Remember to use the code NC20ACCESS to get your free entry here.

China is playing it carefully in its dealings with the U.S. right now. Beijing has avoided congratulating Biden on his election win, and also did not include U.S. travelers in its new entry bans announced last week, despite the tsunami of new COVID-19 infections in America.

Meanwhile, Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 is making sure everyone knows that China is a socialist country where ideology is of supreme importance. Today’s top story from Xinhua News Agency (Chinese, English) is “Comrade Xi Jinping’s On the Party’s Propaganda and Ideological Work published and distributed.”

The book is a compilation of speeches and writings by Xi, summarized here (in Chinese). Here is a representative selection of chapter titles:

• The thought and basic strategy of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era
• Strengthen cultural confidence and promote the prosperity of socialist culture  
• Do propaganda and ideological work better
• Insist on historical materialism and continuously open up new realms for the development of Marxism in contemporary China
• Insist on and make good use of the living soul of Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 Thought
• Improve the country’s cultural soft power
• Speech at the Symposium on Literary Work; excerpt: “Literary and art workers must hold high the banner of socialist core values”  
• Tell the Chinese story more and more brilliantly, make the Chinese voice louder and louder
• Speech at the Symposium on Cyber ​​Security and Informatization; excerpt: “We must…cultivate a positive, healthy, and positive online culture, build a good online ecology, and use the internet to guide public opinion”  
• Being a journalist trusted by the Party and the people; excerpt: “Journalists must adhere to the correct political direction and be politically firm journalists”

You get the idea. To paraphrase and twist a phrase that used to be said of Donald Trump: Take Xi Jinping both seriously and literally.

Our word of the day is Joe Biden (乔·拜登 qiáo bàidēng).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief