Editor’s note for Wednesday, February 24, 2021
A note from the editor of today's The China Project Access newsletter.
My thoughts today:
The Peopleโs Daily โ house newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party โ yesterday published a lengthy encomium to Xรญ Jรฌnpรญng ไน ่ฟๅนณ, unusual even by the standards of these sycophantic times, noted Carl Minzner, scholar and author of End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise, in this Twitter thread. Excerpt:
Page 2 of the People’s Daily is a full page paen on Xi Jinping’s anti-poverty exploits. A few thoughts on what it might mean.
Recognize how unusual the format is. Page 2 โ single article, entire page of text (no photos). Sure, you sometimes see that for full page releases of Party documents, or reprints of high level speeches. But not usually for single articles.
The focus is on Xi Jinping himself โ not on the Party. Not on Party policy. On Xi personally. On specific steps he himself has taken. 70 (!!) mentions of his nameโฆ
Rough guess:
1) Party propaganda setting things up for Xi to claim personal credit for eradicating poverty in China.
2) This will be a core element of efforts in near future to raise Xi’s personal status in Party ideological pantheon to a Mao-like levelโฆ
Todayโs Peopleโs Daily had a similar Xi hagiography, prompting Minzner to ask: โCould it remotely be possible that some in the Party are toying with prospect of raising Xi above Mao? Sure, Mao unified China after decades of civil war, and ended the century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers. But if Xi ended millennia of povertyโฆโ
Our word of the day is single-dose vaccine (ๅๅ้็ซ่ dฤn jรฌliร ng yรฌmiรกo).
โJeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
