How to read the People’s Daily: Q&A with Manoj Kewalramani

Manoj Kewalramani helps the world track Chinese politics, policy discourse, and the narrative of the Communist Party of China.

He writes the weekday newsletter Tracking People’s Daily, which explains and interprets the Party’s house newspaper, which is one of the best ways to understand the priorities and plans of China’s leaders.

Kewalramani is the author of the book Smokeless War: China’s Quest for Geopolitical Dominance, a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution in Bengaluru, and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, D.C., but based in New Delhi.

He recently spoke with Jonathan Landreth. This is an abridged, edited transcript of their conversation.

When did you live and work in China?

From 2011 to 2016. I still travel there every couple of years.

You describe Tracking People’s Daily as munching the proverbial sawdust of the CCP’s messaging by the bucketful? Why do it?

My flippant answer is that I do it every day out of a deep sense of masochism. I started reading the People’s Daily (民日报 rénmín rìbào) and Chinese media regularly. I worked with Chinese media as a journalist, so I was very familiar with the ecosystem. Once I moved to research, I saw that there was lots of oversimplification of Chinese policies and thought processes and that, since China was closing down, it was becoming much easier to not think deeply about how Chinese leadership, policymakers, and people communicate themselves and see the world.

People’s Daily was the ideal starting point because it commands hegemonic status within the communications ecosystem in the party-state system. It sets the tone for key policies and gives you a glimpse into the leaders’ priorities. I started in April 2020 as an important opportunity to work on a book looking at how China dealt with the pandemic. The impetus was to observe what the Party was talking about and how it described its challenges. How were they seeing the world as the pandemic spread?

Walk us through your process.

It became a habit and I started enjoying going through the paper. I felt clued-in about certain narratives that might impact India or other parts of the world, and more informed about how China’s leadership is trying to spread its views.

We live in a world of tremendous geopolitical and economic flux and the pandemic added turbulence. It became increasingly important to try, on a daily basis, to figure out if there was change taking place in the leadership’s thinking. How does it happen? Where does it reflect and how does it percolate down to the provinces and local governments? And how do they interpret and implement it?

A stained-glass portrait of Máo Zédōng 毛泽东, founder of the People’s Republic of China. Courtesy of Plastered 8.

I don’t think that the Chinese information ecosystem and policy ecosystem is entirely a black box. At the elite level, yes, personnel changes are as black box as you can get, but it’s possible to figure out, say, where the wind is blowing on economic policy. The Chinese information ecosystem is more like a stained glass window that allows some light to get through. Within that light, we try to sort out what’s going on.

On an average day it takes me about two and a half hours. I start really early in the morning and go through the entire paper. There’s a pattern to it. The front page is usually top leadership news, dominated by Xi Jinping 习近平. It’s not really news, but rather sort of a corporate bulletin highlighting what the CEO and other top leadership is doing.

Page two is usually domestic stories about the economy. Page three is usually Chinese foreign affairs. Page four is domestic stories. Then you’ve got a page of theoretical articles, which can be really dry but sometimes contain interesting discussions or interpretations of a policy or Party slogan. Towards the end, there’s a page of news from around the world, which is really the only place you’ll find bad news: inflation in Britain, interest rates rising somewhere, a train accident somewhere, usually something miserable happening in the United States.

Sometimes in the newsletter I cover things not in People’s Daily to highlight the fact that something happened but was not covered and try to figure out why. Was it just simply an editorial decision based on space, or was it something the Party didn’t want to highlight?

After all, People’s Daily is not meant for people like you and me. It’s meant for Party cadres. So, why are certain things being highlighted and others not? What slogans are repeated frequently and how are they interpreted?

In your time as a foreign editor at CGTN, the English-language arm of state-run China Central Television, did you ever find that ordinary Chinese looked to People’s Daily as a guide to living?

No. I don’t think I ever had a serious conversation with anybody in China who found that People’s Daily was relevant to their lives on a daily basis. But that might not be the best metric to understand its impact. In the command communication model, you’re setting the tone on certain policies and that tone is repeated by the entire information ecosystem. So if, on economic policy for instance, the tone is “We need to boost domestic consumption,” and that tone is repeated by the entire ecosystem, then, even if you’re accessing news through Weibo, you will probably encounter those messages one way or another.

What was your job at CGTN?

Starting in 2013, I was a digital media editor, editing English language content, sometimes making editorial calls on international news, not domestic news. I was there during the 2014 Umbrella protests in Hong Kong and argued intensely with my senior editors to say that there are certain things that we should just not do, even if you’re pushing a certain narrative.

Such as?

Such as, say, for the longest time CGTN did not cover the Hong Kong protests. It took the editors time to get clarity on where the political lines were. When they did cover the protests their reports were essentially about how the protests were inconveniencing people. I remember saying, “You can talk about how taxi drivers and commuters are being inconvenienced, but you also need to talk about why the protesters are protesting” The answer I got was one that even the person giving it didn’t believe: “The Western press is covering the protesters and we’re gonna cover the other side and that brings some sort of balance,” which I thought was a cop-out.

It’s easy, from the outside, to be critical of decisions made by people in those positions but, once you’ve been in that space, you understand the kind of pressures facing a lot of Chinese editors to distort the narrative. They generally do genuinely care about their own people and about what’s happening but, obviously, there are boundaries that are difficult.

Did you observe CGTN and People’s Daily cooperating?

CGTN is in English and seldom focused on domestic Chinese news. Most of our editorial discussions were on world affairs. What I saw was that if Xinhua carried a story, then we were free to play around with it, report it out, carry it until we were not free to do so. CGTN took Xinhua as the benchmark because it reports to the State Council. In this cannibalistic environment, where each media outlet takes from the other without attribution, you first wait for the political line to be set and then you go in that direction.

How does a newcomer to People’s Daily begin to understand Party-speak that sets policy direction for the cadres?

I try to identify and simplify certain slogans I think are relevant. I say, “Hey, look, this is being used in this context here. I’m not necessarily sure what that implies, but it’s useful for you to know the context.” A lot of People’s Daily is in idioms and metaphors that sometimes can be of political or colloquial significance. I try my best to identify and highlight this discourse.

What’s an example?

In Xi Jinping’s speech at the 100th anniversary of the Party, he spoke a phrase that got translated as “broken heads” and “bleeding skulls,” and there was a lot of, ”Oh, my gosh! Xi is talking about conflict!” The imagery was violent. I remember that the media around the world picked it up and made it a big conversation within China-watching circles. It’s a colloquial phrase; it didn’t mean that Xi was saying that conflict was imminent, or that China was threatening violence. At the end of the day, Xi is a politician using phrases that arouse certain emotions in his target audience.

There are points when he might quote from an ancient book or poem and I’ll say, “Okay, where is this from?” I’m not a Chinese historian nor a scholar of Chinese classical literature, so, for me, it’s a learning experience to see in what way an old phrase is used in a modern context, and then ask why it was used. That’s sometimes fun.

If he isn’t elected, is Xi a politician?

I think legitimacy matters to Xi Jinping. Popular opinion matters to him. It also matters in terms of the elite and the cadres and the entire Party ecosystem. That’s why he constantly demands loyalty and uses different tools for generating that legitimacy. Sometimes it’s language which signifies his personal attributes and qualities and how he’s a grand Marxist thinker and scholar and strategist and doer. All the stories around Xi Jinping — of how he was sent down, and how he came back, and how he’s focused on reform — are building a sense of legitimacy.

Sometimes history says, “Hey, look, this is why, today, we must continue to be governed by this man.” Sometimes, it’s performance. Look at COVID, for instance, where China, officially, at least, has had fewer deaths than any major country. Or the economy — another tool to generate legitimacy. Xi is a politician like anybody else, like all politicians in India and in the U.S. who take policies from the past and rebrand them with a little bit of innovation. Xi Jinping didn’t come up with the Silk Road himself. It’s what a smart politician does, so I give him a lot of credit.

Does People’s Daily reflect any Party vulnerabilities?

One of the peculiarities of authoritarian systems, and the Communist Party of China specifically, is that you see a sense of brittleness and fragility coexist with a sense of hubris and competence. Both are reflected. When People’s Daily is covering, say, economic numbers from the first half of the year, it’s very selective, very cautious. It’s not talking about where China has missed expectations. I’ve rarely seen a year-on-year number reporting a decline. Rates always increase. So, whichever is the best, most-positive sounding period is what People’s Daily reports. What also happens are reports like the ones we’ve seen in early August that talk about the economy being “not yet solid.” You know, “it’s still developing,” and “don’t worry about short-term fluctuations; think of the long-term high-quality development we’re looking at.” China is trying to shift its economic model, but at the same time is terribly concerned, which is why the new People’s Bank of China governor is meeting with real estate companies and finance companies and saying, “Hey, look, let the money start flowing again.”

We get glimpses of difficult policy discussions and deliberations taking place behind closed doors and triangulate them with data and excellent reporting published by journalists from around the world working in China to try to get a picture of what’s actually going on. Yes, there is vulnerability. For instance, if I just read People’s Daily, I wouldn’t know that there are terrible floods in China. That’s never front page news. I would not know how many people died or how many are struggling because their property has been destroyed. One day I’d be told that the government compensated the victims, and then I could begin to figure out what happened.

Are there Chinese phrases that remind you of Hindi?

China and India are very different culturally, what with India being so diverse itself. But in terms of how we think about the role of the state in society, there are some cultural similarities. For example, think of a triangle with the state on one side, the market on another, and the people on the third. What is their relationship? I think you’d find very different answers in America, but in India and China you’d probably find a far more common thread in the idea of the state being a paternalistic entity, which must provide certain things. Now, that’s partly because of our histories, but that’s also partly because of our cultures. The market is generally something that’s been not trusted as much. India was a mixed-market economy until we liberalized in 1991. China went through liberalization a little bit earlier. The general suspicion of the market is somewhat similar, as is the role of the individual in this sort of ecosystem. Should policies be driven by individual liberty, keeping the individual at the center, or should you be thinking of the group, the collective society, or of the state? I think there are similar debates in India and China.

For example, when the pandemic hit, Indians who are extremely conscious of the right to privacy, followed along government requirements on data. Although India’s Supreme Court has deemed privacy a fundamental right, most Indians did not protest use of the official government app, which collected health data. It required one to report health information, contact tracing, and bluetooth use. Nobody protested. It was perfectly fine. In that sense, I think there are similarities between India and China in terms of how we conceptualize the role of the individual in society. Obviously, China’s got a Party state, so there’s a difference in how it plays out.

Does People’s Daily play up China’s cultural commonality with India?

People’s Daily rarely ever mentions India and when it does it’s usually on the international news page reporting something really miserable that’s happened. There’s hardly any reportage of, say, development that’s happened in India. On rare occasions you will find pro forma coverage of a meeting between foreign ministry-level officials but otherwise the newspaper doesn’t really set the tone on China’s relationship with India. The fact that India doesn’t get mentioned signifies where India stands in Beijing’s thinking of the hierarchy of the world. You will see People’s Daily mention engagements with Russia, even if they are fairly basic party-to-party conversations. The United States gets a lot of mention, of course, because it’s challenge number one. Criticism is on the rise of Japan under Prime Minister Kishida. The European Union sometimes gets told, “Look, start fending for yourself. Break away from the Americans.”

Where does China ally Pakistan rank in People’s Daily?

Recently its mention was on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Otherwise, very rarely does Pakistan get mentioned unless there’s an official visit of any significance. You’ll never see terribly negative stories around Pakistan. You will never read stories about a big terrorist attack unless there are Chinese civilians killed. Usually such a story warrants an official statement as opposed to real coverage. You’ll never see that XYZ city in Pakistan is struggling with electricity, or there are protests in the street. The entire fiasco of Imran Khan’s exit got barely any coverage. What was covered was how Beijing was engaging with officials from Pakistan and talking to them briefly about stability.

Terrible question alert: What does an ordinary Indian think of China?

There isn’t enough public polling in India, but the latest Pew survey said that about 25% of Indians had a favorable view of China. To me that’s higher than I would have assumed. There were some surveys in 2008-2009, in one of the good periods between India and China, when the highest favorability rating was 33%. So the fact that today, after three years of intense hostility at the border in Kashmir, it’s 25% — that’s surprising.

My think tank did a survey a year and a half ago in which we asked participants to identify India’s biggest strategic challenges. China was at the top of every list. This was an unscientific online survey of people from the strategic affairs community and about 700 ordinary people. Another major Indian think tank called the Observer Research Foundation did a systematic poll of about 4,000 young Indians, and again China was seen predominantly through the threat lens, as opposed to the opportunity lens.

A threat economically? Militarily?

Not just militarily, on the border, but economically because India’s trade deficit with China is the largest we have as a country, which is not surprising given China is the world’s biggest manufacturer. That’s a source of anxiety. One part of the conversation in India has been, “Hey, look, by trading with China, we are funding our own containment.” On any given day, there are about 200 Chinese naval and private vessels in the Indian Ocean region. Then there’s Chinese support for Pakistan, not just in terms of the development of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, but also the joint development of Pakistan’s Air Force, Pakistan’s Navy (China’s just gifted Pakistan four frigates), and China’s support for Pakistan-based terrorists implicated in attacks on India. It took India more than 10 years to blacklist one of these terrorists, Hafez Saeed, at the UN Security Council because China kept blocking it.

From an Indian perspective, from policymakers to the ordinary public, yes, we want to trade with China. We understand that trade is necessary for our growth and for our consumer welfare. The challenge is that China is systematically sending us messages that it does not appreciate India’s aspirations to rise as a major power. There’s a deep sense that Chinese policies are inimical to India’s rise as much as economic engagement with China is useful for India.

It’s been three and a half years since we’ve had a direct, official bilateral meeting between the Indian prime minister and the Chinese president. The only conversation that they’ve had since then, was a brief engagement in Bali, in November 2022, when, during dinner, the Indian prime minister went up to Xi Jinping, shook his hand and they shared some words. The Indian side described this as an exchange of courtesies. The Chinese side didn’t comment until very recently, in a cryptic Ministry of Foreign Affairs readout of a meeting between China’s Foreign Minister Wáng Yì 王毅 and India’s national security adviser.

The point is that today we are at this stage, but in 2007-2008, you had an Indian prime minister who, when talking about Mumbai, India’s financial capital, and talking about developing it, said, “We want to develop Mumbai as the next Shanghai.” India’s government was looking at China as an aspirational model, at least in terms of economic development. It was not London, New York, or Paris. It was Shanghai. I don’t think you’d hear an Indian politician say that today. Perhaps not for another generation.

What do tech-savvy young Indians think of China’s media control?

That’s a difficult question because our media itself is going through a tremendous churn. When it comes to the governance of tech, whether it is conversations in cyberspace, privacy, or regulation of data — both commercial and private — or governance of AI, India has a lot of catching up to do.

We’ve been debating and struggling to come up with a coherent personal data protection bill for quite a few years. It’s critical to be able to define what is personal data. We have a lot to do when it comes to governance mechanisms. For good or for bad, I think the Chinese government has actually taken quite significant steps when it comes to regulation of technology as a whole. Some of it has been detrimental to the consumer tech sector, but otherwise, there has been an effort to try and create some sort of boundaries, and be early in these conversations because they find it valuable to be able to gauge domestic stability, governance of growth of companies, where the money is going — in which sectors — and technology standards-setting internationally.

China is looking at those sorts of things, but in India we’re now trying to develop a technology ecosystem which goes beyond outsourcing, to be able to create intellectual property, to be able to protect IP. Pharmaceuticals is an example. As India generates much more IP, our IP rules will change. Today, generic drugs in India are a significant part of the global ecosystem of drugs.

In terms of tech, India is still developing these frameworks. How do we think about the role of the government when it comes to technology? This government has been quite vocal over nearly 10 years wanting to support the technology ecosystem and build it. We’ve seen lots of money come in, including lots of Chinese money at a certain point of time, which all stopped in 2020, partly because of China’s own slowdown and its own policies for Chinese tech companies, but also partly because of the Indian government cracking down on Chinese investments. In India, we’re still struggling with the idea of the balance between security, governance and growth that tech offers, whereas in China, in certain sectors, the government has picked the winners and losers.

In terms of talents and educating people, in China, you’re seeing a much more focused approach in trying to make sure that you at least have a higher standard of connectivity between research and industry. In India, we’re struggling to do this. Indians are struggling because the state has limited capacity to do some of these things, and Indian private sector funding of research is very cool. From the 1990s onwards, on an average annually, India spends 0.7% of its GDP on R&D, and of that the private sector is a minuscule percentage. In China, that’s much higher, it’s well over 2%, and right now is reaching U.S. levels.

The reason why China can do this more than India is because, yes, the state can fund lots of R&D, the private sector can fund lots of R&D, and there’s easier access to capital over the years as the country’s grown. Also, there’s a greater appetite to deal with wasted capital. In democratic societies when capital is wasted, particularly if it’s state capital, it comes with costs for politicians and bureaucrats. In China, it might not come with those kinds of costs. It can, at times, but not necessarily, so, in China, the appetite for wastage is much higher.

Tell us about China’s “smokeless war” and global domination plan that you describe in your book?

“Smokeless war” was the phrase the Chinese used to characterize the fight against the pandemic. My book deals with 2020 and looks at how the Chinese government responded to the pandemic, and ends with the election of Joe Biden.

Each chapter deals with China’s domestic political narrative, economic policies, the approach toward systemic competition with the West, and how the pandemic played a role. What were the fights around the origins of COVID? How did the relationship between the Trump administration and the Chinese government deteriorate in the midst of the pandemic? There’s lots of discussion of how Chinese analysts looked at the Biden election and China’s relationship to the U.S. What did it all mean for the role of the state as an institution and its relationship to individuals?

The pandemic strengthened the role of the state in every sense, in terms of privacy and industrial policy. That was reflected in China. What does that mean for the nature of businesses and economic globalization? Unlike the news headlines looking at Pew surveys of 15-17 countries that say China is extremely unpopular — it’s not! — China has a significant sway in the developing world.

But Chinese policies have also led to counterbalancing actions. I don’t necessarily see “decoupling” taking place because it makes no sense. Yes, you will see a move towards resilience in companies’ supply chains. Essentially, geopolitics is going to play a much more important role in economic decision making, however politicians describe that — ”de-risking.”

At the end of the day, enterprises will have to make certain difficult choices, but that does not mean that they’re going to exit China wholesale; that does not mean that foreign investment in China is going to plummet overnight.

I end the book with the idea that from Xi Jinping’s point of view, the pandemic was a legacy issue. I don’t think I could have predicted how COVID zero ended. In fact, a few months before it ended, I testified before the USSC and one of the questions was: “Will protests lead to the end of COVID zero?” My answer was, “I’m skeptical. It depends on the nature of protests, the scale of the protests and their timing. It’s very difficult to predict but, as it stands today, it seems unlikely. To me what seems likely to happen is a gradual phase-out.”

Of course, the Chinese were nice enough to leave me with egg on my face. The book looks at how the pandemic became and was framed as a legacy issue for Xi Jinping and why it’s so difficult for the Chinese to even be critical of COVID zero, even today, after they’ve abandoned it completely.