Editor’s note for Wednesday, November 30, 2022

My thoughts today:

China’s former leader Jiāng Zémín 江泽民 died today. Of course he may have died last week, but Chinese state media announced it today. There are obituaries for him from all the major media organizations (including us), arguments about his place in history, and plenty of speculation about whether his death will become a rallying issue for China’s COVID-weary citizens.

You can read our report by Nadya Yeh on the announcement of Jiang’s death on our website or in the newsletter below, a roundup of five lesser-known facts about Jiang that Chinese internet users have been celebrating today by Zhao Yuanyuan, or my essay on Jiang that was originally published last year in the Cambridge University Press book The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives.

Meanwhile in the last 24 hours, Chinese stocks have rallied because some investors believe the government is going to end its COVID-zero policy. And indeed, yesterday the Beijing News profiled people who said COVID was like a “bad cold”, and today Hú Xījìn 胡锡进, the influential former editor of propaganda rag Global Times, said “Most Chinese people are no longer afraid of being infected.”

Our word of the day is the elder or senior citizen (长者 zhǎng zhě), a word used by enthusiasts of the Chinese internet subculture revolving around Jiang Zemin to describe their anti-hero, also known as the toad (蛤 há).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief