Editor’s note for Tuesday, December 14, 2021

My thoughts today:

Who makes the best propaganda?

Hú Xījìn 胡锡进 “is China’s most famous propagandist,” writes Han Zhang in the Guardian: “At the Global Times, he helped establish a chest-thumping new tone for China on the world stage — but can he keep up with the forces he has unleashed?” (It’s an excellent profile, and perhaps owes something to the one we published in 2020: Hu Xijin, China’s greatest internet troll!)

Hu was an early pioneer of the use of “authentic” foreign editors to help him get his message to the outside world — some of them are quoted in Han Zhang’s piece. But even Hu could probably not have imagined, just a few years ago, the hyper-enthusiastic help the Party could get from a new generation of foreign “influencers” on Youtube and Twitter, some of whom are the subject of a New York Times investigation.

Sad news for the Shanghai restaurant scene: M on the Bund closing.

Our word of the day is cultural confidence (文化自信 wénhuà zìxìn), which is what Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 today called on Chinese artists and writers to have — see English or Chinese reports.

It’s quite difficult to have cultural confidence when you keep on getting censored, and ambitious propagandists always hog the limelight (see above), but here we are.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief