A significant week in Beijing when nothing happened — Editor’s note for Friday, October 21, 2022
A note for Weekly newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader,
The Communist Party is wrapping up its 20th congress this weekend. Although the meeting has set the direction for China’s political life for the next five years, nothing happened aside from some lengthy speeches by Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 and some of his colleagues.
As far as we know, nothing really happened. Even the biggest news organizations in the world are left reporting rumor and scuttlebutt, and trying to decipher the real meaning of the tidbits of information that have been emerging from the Party’s secretive meeting.
We’ll be summarizing all the coverage next week, and subscribers to The China Project can join me, Kaiser Kuo, and Lizzi Lee on October 26 for a discussion about what we’ve learned.
Our phrase of the week is: Overprivileged and out of touch (四体不勤，五谷不分 sìtǐ bùqín, wǔgǔ bùfēn), inspired by an online spat in which Elon Musk attempted to write Chinese.
