A Plenum, A Plan… And A Paramount Leader?

The fifth plenum of China’s 19th Party Congress, a gathering of leaders on the Party’s Central Committee, ended today, October 29. The proceedings happened behind closed doors but early reports suggest that Xi Jinping will retain power far past 2022.

The New York Times reported that the conference reflected Xi’s consolidation of power within the Party. From Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers:

A Communist Party conclave concluded on Thursday with a rousing statement lauding Mr. Xi as the party’s helmsman, affirming his broad mandate as the leader who will steer China through perilous waters for years to come. The meeting of the Central Committee, a council of senior officials, laid out ambitions for China to mature as an economic, military and cultural power despite rising uncertainty abroad.

With Mr. Xi as the “the core navigator and helmsman,” an official summary from the meeting read, “we will certainly be able to conquer the range of hardships and dangers that lie on the path forward.”

[…] “This is a big show for Xi Jinping to try to convince the senior cadres that he deserves support to remain supreme leader well beyond 10 years,” Mr. Lam, the analyst, said. [Source]

In the days before the session, CDT translated leaked censorship directives which directed media to refrain from all mention of “high-level infighting,” “power struggles,” “factional struggles,” and the “Xi faction.” The plenary session did not include any mention of a potential successor to Xi. The Economist analyzed the conspicuous absence of new leadership, a strong indicator that Xi plans to stay in power beyond 2022:

For anyone still in doubt about Mr Xi’s intentions, the party’s just-concluded meeting gave a hint as obvious as the one in 2010 that heralded his rise to power. A communiqué issued on October 29th, at the end of the four-day conclave of its roughly 370-strong Central Committee, said the gathering had endorsed “recommendations” for a five-year economic plan and a blueprint for China’s development until 2035 (full details of these had yet to be published when The Economist went to press). But it made no mention of any new civilian appointment to the military commission.

The post of vice-chairman is an important one for any future leader to hold before taking over. Mr Hu got the job three years before he became general secretary. Without experience of how military command works, a party chief may find it hard to assert control over the army. There are still two uniformed vice-chairmen. But the continuing absence of a civilian at that level means China has no leader-in-waiting when time has all but run out to start learning the ropes before the party’s 20th congress in 2022. A civilian vice-chairman would also be a member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee. But a reshuffle of that seven-member body in 2017 did not include anyone of the usual sort of age of someone being groomed for succession. [Source]

(2035, btw, is the halfway point between the 100th anniversary of the CCP's founding, 2021, and the 100th anniversary of the PRC's establishment, 2049. It's a key year in many existing plans, like "China Standards 2035," & its importance will be elevated further at the plenum.)

— Julian Gewirtz (@JulianGewirtz) October 25, 2020

A Nikkei Asian Review article tied Xi’s 2035 goals to Mao’s semi-mystical connection to the number 8341. A second Nikkei Asian Review elaborated on these points, tying the 15-year blueprint to Xi’s potential extended stay in office:

Michael Hirson, practice head for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, wrote in a note Friday that the plenum will mark the introduction of “China’s most geopolitical five-year plan” to date, reflecting Xi’s drive to increase China’s self-reliance in terms of demand as well as supply. He called the 2021-2026 five-year plan as “best thought of as the first five years in a 15-year agenda,” as Xi seeks to stay in power after 2022.

“In the pre-Xi era, the fifth plenum was part of the process of transitioning to the next generation of leadership,” Hirson said, noting that the implementation of the five-year plan would fall on the next leader. “But Xi’s ambitions to stay on for a third term in 2022 have changed the role and significance of this meeting,” he said. [Source]

Although the details of China’s new Five Year Plan will not be released until 2021, Macro Polo, the Paulson Institute’s in-house think tank, predicts that policy makers will focus on “dual circulation” strategy, an economic policy Xi elaborated on during a recent speech in Shenzhen. They further predicted a decreased emphasis on growth and a greater focus on China’s rapidly growing income inequality. Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quoted in Politico’s China Watcher newsletter, said “[expect] plenty of mentions about ‘reform and opening’ and ‘the market,’ but we should also expect those words to be balanced against an emphasis on ‘self-reliance.’” This self-reliance, wrote The Wall Street Journal’s Lingling Wei, “is a defiant message in the face of intensifying U.S. sanctions against Chinese firms.”

The next step after "changes not seen in a century." The CCP has clearly doubled down on its assessment that China is on the rise and the US is in decline, and it is going to continue to act accordingly. https://t.co/XO8jlIxYqG

— Alexander Bowe (@boweconstrictr) October 29, 2020

At The Diplomat, Shannon Tiezzi noted that the plenum’s summary report hinted at property rights reform, a long-held hope of some Chinese thinkers:

There is also a tantalizing mention of a “breakthrough” on property rights reform. This has been something of a Holy Grail for reformists in China, long discussed but never grasped. Under China’s communist system, all land is technically owned by the government – something that especially disadvantages rural landholders, who can see their property taken away at the whim of a local government, with little compensation and less change of redress. Whether this brief mention in the communique will result in real change to China’s land rights or simply more dashed hopes remains to be seen. [Source]

China’s Five Year Plan has significant implications for the environment. Xi had previously promised to make China carbon neutral by 2060. An authoritative paper by Tsinghua University researchers suggested that the 14th Five Year Plan set “a carbon emissions cap of under 10.5 billion tons” by 2025 in order to achieve this goal. Tom Baxter and Yao Zhe wrote an analysis for China Dialogue:

Research into a cap on carbon emissions is new territory for an FYP. In the 13th FYP, targets were set to control China’s total energy consumption at five billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent, and to further reduce the energy- and carbon-intensity of the economy. However, the energy consumption cap ignores the carbon-intensity of energy sources, even though these affect carbon emissions and could be chosen to reduce them.

Wang Yi, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and a key climate and sustainability advisor to the government, suggested replacing the energy consumption cap with a carbon emissions cap in the 14th FYP at this year’s National People’s Congress sessions. [Source]

The plenum-ending report also called for the People’s Liberation Army to become fully modern by 2027, the centennial of its founding. Josephine Ma and William Zheng reported for The South China Morning Post:

Hong Kong military analyst Song Zhongping said the new centennial goal can be interpreted as “putting the PLA as a leading modern force in the world, one that can be on par with the US army”.

Junfei Wu, deputy head of Hong Kong think tank Tianda Institute said this is the first time the Chinese leaders have included the military in such development goals. He said the goal was primarily targeted at Taiwan.

“Basically, the target is to build PLA’s capability to match the US army by 2027, so It can effectively deter interference by the US army around the Taiwan Strait.” [Source]

A Global Times editorial, published in the hours after the plenum’s conclusion, summarized China’s triumphant mood. The two challenges of “American containment” and coronavirus could not stop China, went the editorial, adding that “the US cannot crush China”:

The two challenges didn’t derail China’s development. They didn’t even have an impact on its speed. They brought about new situations and conditions, which have driven China’s amazing adaptability. Chinese people have developed a broader vision and become more capable in dealing with challenges, just like the country’s strength and renewal of resistance outperformed a mutating virus. [Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/a-plenum-a-plan-and-a-paramount-leader/

Photo: Little HK, by Gauthier DELECROIX

Little HK, by Gauthier DELECROIX (CC BY 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/photo-little-hk-by-gauthier-delecroix/

Minitrue Diary, February 11, 2020: Novel Coronavirus Terminology, Superspreaders, Too Many Flags

CDT has recently acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of this year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020, and we will be posting them over the coming weeks. The following three directives were released on February 11, 2020.

In the spirit of the National Health Commission’s “Notice on Tentative Terminologies Related to Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia” from February 8, news reports may refer to “pneumonia from novel coronavirus infections” as “novel coronavirus pneumonia” or “NCP”—in English, “novel coronavirus pneumonia” or “NCP” for short. (February 11, 2020) [Chinese]

This report is inaccurate, please withdraw it: “Paper lead-authored by Zhong Nanshan: Incubation period can be as long as 24 days; superspreaders are possible.” (February 11, 2020) [Chinese]

There should not be too many flags, banners, or symbols onscreen during news reports. (February 11, 2020) [Chinese]

These directives continued a stream of orders banning or limiting coverage of certain aspects of the spread of the novel coronavirus in China. Well-known epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan was the first to publicly confirm that the virus could be transmitted from person to person in late January. It has since been accepted by the scientific community that “superspreaders” are indeed responsible for much of the COVID-19 transmission globally.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/minitrue-diary-february-11-2020-novel-coronavirus-terminology-superspreaders-too-many-flags/

LGBTQ+ Activists Fight For Rights Despite Legal Setbacks

Although homosexuality was decriminalized in 1997 and delisted as a psychiatric disorder in 2001, the Chinese LGBTQ+ community continues to face discrimination and marginalization from both the Chinese state and Chinese society. From discriminatory textbooks to China’s new Civil Code, adoption rights to transgender protections, 2020 has been a landmark year for the LGBTQ+ community’s fight for equality in the face of the law. 

In 2016, an undergraduate sociology major filed a civil suit against a textbook publisher for designating homosexuality as a “psychosexual disorder” and a “perversion” in a case that echoed a 2015 suit against China’s Ministry of Education on similar grounds. After four years of delays, a Jiangsu court ruled against the plaintiff in a September 2020 ruling. At The New York Times, Sui-Lee Wee profiled Ou Jiayong the young woman who brought the suit against the publisher:

So Ms. Ou, who also uses the name Xixi, brought a lawsuit demanding that the publisher remove the reference and publicly apologize. Her case has renewed the conversation about tolerance and human rights in a country where discrimination based on sexual orientation is rampant and where homosexuality has long been seen as incompatible with the traditional emphasis on marriage.

In a letter to the judge, Ms. Ou, now 23, recalled being “deeply stung” when she read the textbook. “It brought back memories of being laughed at by my classmates because of my homosexuality,” she wrote in the letter, which her lawyer read aloud in court this summer, three years after the suit was filed.

[…] Ms. Ou’s case stunned many people who had no idea that some textbooks still classified homosexuality as a disease, said Peng Yanzi, director of L.G.B.T. Rights Advocacy China, an influential group that has led many awareness-raising campaigns. Citing a survey that a research group conducted in 2016 and 2017, out of the 91 psychology textbooks used in Chinese universities, almost half of them said that homosexuality was a type of disease. Several have been amended, Mr. Peng said, but “many more” remain. [Source]

Although same-sex couples may hold private marriage ceremonies, the Chinese state does not recognize same-sex marriage. This leaves couples in a legal gray area, unable to co-register property deeds, legally adopt children, enjoy marriage-based workplace benefits, or change hukou household registrations, among other issues. In May of this year, China adopted its first Civil Code, a collection of “private laws that regulate property and personal rights, including laws on contracts, property, marriage, and torts.” In September at ChinaFile, Darius Longarino wrote on the “Love Makes Family” campaign, a movement to legalize same-sex marriage through inclusion in the Civil Code:

Ai Cheng Jia posted explainers online on how to formally submit comments to lawmakers calling for gay marriage, and created a Weibo hashtag “Civil Code Same-sex Marriage.” The campaign went viral beyond organizers’ expectations. In the first four days, the hashtag’s view count surged to 200 million before censors deleted it. Mercifully, whether for lack of capability or caring, censors did not ratchet up Internet controls, allowing supporters to keep spreading the word. In one such post, a Wuhan lesbian couple made a heartfelt appeal for why others should join this seemingly quixotic quest. “Many people believe it’s not yet time to legalize gay marriage . . . but if we don’t do anything, it’ll never ‘be time,’” they wrote. “There is no ‘right time.’ There is just us making the time ‘right.’” Ai Cheng Jia encouraged straight allies to join in, including parents of gays and lesbians, some of whom printed out family photos and mailed them in with proposals. The submission numbers climbed into the thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands.

By the close of the month-long comment period, a whopping 213,634 people had made submissions on the Code’s marriage chapter, absolutely dwarfing counts for other sections by orders of magnitude. The sheer scale was exciting, but when a National People’s Congress (NPC) spokesperson publicly acknowledged the large volume of calls for gay marriage, the social media champagne really uncorked. Celebratory posts cascaded down feeds. The state-run Beijing News created a hashtag about the spokesperson’s statement that reached 840 million views (though it later deleted its original post and removed itself as the hashtag creator).

The campaign fell short of achieving its ultimate goal; the final draft of the Code, passed in May, limits marriage to “man and woman.” But the fact the campaign mobilized so many people and got so much attention instilled a greater sense of agency in China’s LGBTQ community. “We will no longer be resigned to fate,” wrote Lengyi, a lesbian college student reflecting on the campaign. “My destiny belongs to me, and not to heaven.” [Source]

Divorced same-sex couples often face difficult custody battles as Chinese courts do not recognize their marriages. A landmark custody case in Shanghai concerning two women who married and had children in the United States attracted broad attention on Weibo this summer. A similar case in Fujian province earlier this year, wherein one woman gave birth to a child conceived of her partner’s embryo, resulted in the judge awarding custody to the birth mother “on grounds that the parental relationship between the child and plaintiff could not be legally established solely on the basis of the child having the plaintiff’s genes.”

"In total, around 100K children are being raised by LGBT couples in China, estimates Hu Zhijun, director of PFLAG, the country’s largest LGBT organization."

Police suggested plaintiff go to court to claim custody of kids (& also threatened to arrest her)https://t.co/LpZnL56dqz

— Darius Longarino 龙大瑞 (@DariusLongarino) May 14, 2020

Transgender men and women likewise face discrimination. In August, a Beijing court ruled in favor of a transwoman, “Gao X”, who was fired from her job as a product manager at the e-commerce firm Dangdang after undergoing gender reassignment surgery. The Beijing lawsuit was one of many brought by transgender individuals who have experienced workplace discrimination after coming out. 

This has been the clearest victory in a transgender discrimination case to date. In part bc Dangdang was so brazenly prejudicial & outright threatened to pressure the courts. The appeals court judgment included the text of a letter from Dangdang to the plaintiff. It's nuts: https://t.co/9MXIKDYTNO pic.twitter.com/hBXEVfs2O8

— Darius Longarino 龙大瑞 (@DariusLongarino) July 31, 2020

While hailing the case as an important anti-discrimination outcome, Longarino wrote in a China Law Translate Article that it was a narrow victory, decided on an “illegal termination (a kind of labor dispute) rather than discrimination (a kind of tort)” basis. 

Activists have now turned their focus to China’s 2020 census, a massive once-a-decade undertaking that tracks China’s demographic changes and informs government policy. At Sixth Tone, Zhang Wanqing wrote about the “they are not my roommate, they are my partner” campaign to get same-sex couples counted in China’s census: 

Started by the Guangzhou-based nonprofit LGBT Rights Advocacy China, the “They are not my roommate, they are my partner” campaign is encouraging queer comrades to disclose their relationships with their partners when the census takers come knocking. Many Chinese same-sex couples in cohabiting relationships often say they are “roommates” to avoid unwanted attention, even though being gay isn’t illegal in China.

Campaigners say LGBT individuals can include their relationship in the “other” category on the census form, which is used to denote a relationship with someone in the household that’s not listed elsewhere on the form.

Lauren, who lives with her girlfriend in Shanghai, told Sixth Tone that the idea for the campaign took root after a positive interaction with a census taker who didn’t seem to raise an eyebrow or judge her relationship. She said the attitude from the person doing preliminary research before the Nov. 1 census emboldened her — though she understands people living in smaller towns and other conservative communities may not be as comfortable opening up. [Source]

This summer the organizers of Shanghai Pride, China’s largest and longest running LGBTQ+ celebration, abruptly announced that they would no longer hold future events. At Supchina, one anonymous team member reported that “at least three people on the core team had been invited to drink tea (喝茶 hē chá) with police—a euphemism for interrogation in China’s political language. Team members don’t feel safe anymore, as they get random house checks and questioned by cops.” 

While Chinese society is increasingly accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, the coronavirus pandemic has underscored continued discrimination against LGBTQ+ Chinese citizens. After photographs of a Chengdu spa popular among gay men went viral on Weibo in early October, the platform was flooded with malicious and scurrilous claims about gay men. CDT Chinese recently published an essay, “Reject Severing Relations,” decrying efforts made by some in the Chinese gay community to distance themselves from the Chengdu bathhouse’s patrons in order to gain society’s acceptance: 

Today, those “bad gays” who you feel the need to sever relations with are those who like going to gay spas. Tomorrow, they might be someone else. Is there really a way to keep severing relations until in the end we truly meet the standard for good gays in “their” eyes?

And finally, after each of us has exhausted ourselves to seem like good gays, when nobody can find anything wrong with us, have you ever considered that being gay itself has always been the thing that, in “their” eyes, requires severing relations? [Chinese]

Despite the homophobic attacks on Weibo, many Chinese youth have found community and acceptance online. At Rest of World, Zeyi Yang and Meaghan Tobin profiled the “subtitle army” that translates LGBTQ+ content into Chinese, providing information hidden by government censors:

It was 2014. Dai was a 15-year-old student in Dalian, China. She was still figuring out her sexuality and, before high school, had never even heard of being gay. Then, she developed a crush on an older female student and began secretly looking online for queer content. That was how she discovered that all the western LGBTIQ movies she’d found were subtitled by the same crew: a volunteer group named Queer as Folk (QAF), or 同志亦凡人中文站.

“QAF is really the place where my eyes were opened,” Dai said. “There I learned that there are actual people with different sexualities, that people have different likings, and that boys and girls dressing in the opposite way is not a problem at all.” She gradually realized she was bisexual. When Dai went off to college, she joined QAF as a subtitle translator. [Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/lgbtq-activists-fight-for-rights-despite-legal-setbacks/

U.S. Charges 8 People Over Illegal Efforts to Target Dissidents

The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that it had arrested eight people for aiding the Chinese government in harassing and intimidating dissidents living in the United States. According to the FBI, the efforts were part of a coordinated, global, extralegal repatriation program known as “Operation Fox Hunt.” The Wall Street Journal’s Aruna Viswanatha reported on details of the suspects’ efforts to coerce and pressure fugitives into returning to China:

The arrests, in the New York area and in California in the past 24 hours, are the first specifically targeting what China describes as an anticorruption effort to return to that country people wanted for economic and other crimes—but which critics, including the U.S. government, in some cases consider a campaign directed at Beijing’s political rivals. 

[…] Between 2016 and 2019, the defendants allegedly tried multiple tactics to pressure a Chinese citizen living in New Jersey described as a fugitive by the Chinese government to return to China, including by bringing his elderly father to the U.S. in an effort to coerce him; targeting his daughter for surveillance and online harassment; and leaving a note taped to his house that said: “If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right. That’s the end of this matter!”

The defendants face charges of conspiring to act as unregistered Chinese agents and stalk and harass a victim couple, who isn’t named but is identifiable as Xu Jin and his wife, Liu Fang. The couple was the subject of a Wall Street Journal Page One article in July that described the alleged harassment they had faced from Chinese operatives, including accusations that the operatives had kidnapped Mr. Xu’s father living in China and that they had posed as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to stalk an immediate relative of Mr. Xu’s living in the U.S. An attorney for the couple declined immediate comment. [Source]

U.S. officials described the suspects as engaged in a coordinated campaign launched by Beijing with the ostensible goal of bringing home fugitives in China’s anti-corruption drive. But NPR’s Ryan Lucas reported that DOJ officials disputed that characterization of the repatriations: 

“Some of the individuals may well be wanted on traditional criminal charges and they may even be guilty of what they are charged with,” [Assistant attorney general John] Demers said. “But in many instances the hunted are opponents of Communist Party Chairman Xi — political rivals, dissidents, and critics. And in either event, the operation is a clear violation of the rule of law and international norms.”

There are established ways to request U.S. assistance in criminal cases, Demers said, but with Operation Fox Hunt, the Chinese government is employing illegal, unauthorized and often covert techniques outside the bounds of the law.

“Without coordination with our government, China’s repatriation squads enter the United States, surveil and locate the alleged fugitives, and deploy intimidation and other tactics to force them back into China where they would face certain imprisonment or worse following illegitimate trials,” Demers said. “There are many established ways that rule of law-abiding nations conduct international law enforcement activity,” he added. “This certainly isn’t one of them.” [Source]

CDT has written extensively about Operation Fox Hunt, including efforts by previous administrations and foreign governments to condemn Beijing’s harassment and intimidation efforts in their countries. 

The Chinese government has employed a variety of strategies over the years to coerce targets into returning to China. In July, the Wall Street Journal published an extensive story about Beijing’s efforts to harass and intimidate two of the targets named this week into returning to China. Aruna Viswanatha and Kate O’Keeffe reported that one strategy involved pursuing the suspects in American courts: 

Chinese officials had laid the groundwork for the lawsuit effort by November 2014, when a top legal-affairs official announced a new plan to sue fugitives in American courts. Explaining the strategy, Xu Hong, director general of the ministry’s Department of Treaty and Law, said: “All major countries are fully aware that pursuing corruption and hunting those fugitives overseas and recovering assets are beneficial and conducive to the interests of all nations.”

[…] Xu Jin and his wife, Liu Fang, appeared on China’s 2015 most-wanted list, accused of bribe-taking. Mr. Xu was a government official overseeing commercial development in a district of Wuhan and later the director of Wuhan’s most powerful planning body, according to a suit that privately owned Xinba Construction Group Co. filed against the couple in New Jersey state court in April 2018.

[…] The couple in court filings deny Mr. Xu extorted or looted any company, calling the litigation a sham to coerce the couple “to return to China and, if not, to harass and attempt to bankrupt” them. The couple countersued, alleging an extensive harassment campaign by Chinese operatives, including accusations that they had kidnapped Mr. Xu’s father living in China and that they had posed as FBI agents to stalk an immediate relative of Mr. Xu’s living in the U.S.

The judge in September 2019 rejected their claims, saying they didn’t provide sufficient evidence that Xinba was working with the Chinese government. A previous judge overseeing the case noted its unusual nature: “It’s not your ordinary case you see in the Superior Court in Essex County, but we’re open for all business I guess…No herniated discs. No slip and falls in this case.” [Source]

The arrests this week are the latest effort by the FBI to go after Chinese individuals allegedly engaged in spying and surveillance in the U.S. That effort has at times proven to be controversial, alongside other initiatives by the Trump administration to counter China on national security grounds. 

Related to that effort, the Department of Justice has continued to press its case to have WeChat removed from U.S. app stores. Researchers at The Citizen Lab have found that the app has been used to surveil international users, whose data was used to build up WeChat’s Chinese political censorship system. But opponents of the ban say that the app is critical to families, journalists, and scholars who rely on the app to communicate with contacts and loved ones in China. Last week, a judge blocked the DOJ’s attempts to ban the app for a second time.

While the Trump administration has placed particular emphasis on going after China for its alleged surveillance work in the U.S., efforts to counter the harassment of Chinese dissidents precede the current administration. As Michael Schmidt reported for the New York Times, efforts to counter the harassment of Chinese dissidents date back to the previous administration: 

The Justice Department has been investigating the Chinese campaign since at least the final years of the Obama administration.

For decades, American intelligence analysts concluded Chinese agents in the United States were primarily assigned to steal trade and government secrets, and gather public information about American life. But the discovery of Operation Fox Hunt” marked a wrinkle in the spy games between the United States and China, creating a new espionage challenge for the F.B.I., which investigates foreign spying and influence campaigns.

In 2015, top Obama officials privately warned Chinese officials to stop using their agents in the United States to harass expatriates. But the documents unsealed on Wednesday show those warnings failed. China appears to have increased its efforts — which are popular among a Chinese public focused on rooting out corruption — in recent years. [Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/u-s-charges-8-people-over-illegal-efforts-to-target-dissidents/

Photo: Chongqing – 2017, by RykJ

Chongqing – 2017, by RykJ (CC BY-SA 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/photo-chongqing-2017-by-rykj/

Minitrue Diary, February 9-10, 2020: Epidemic Controversies, Hong Kong Donations

CDT has recently acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of this year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020, and we will be posting them over the coming weeks. The following two directives were released on February 9 and 10, 2020.

Regarding reports on the epidemic, do not take the initiative in covering controversial topics, and do not look back or repost on controversial topics from the past. (February 9, 2020) [Chinese]

This broad, pre-emptive directive aimed to help “control the temperature” and contain potentially emerging sources of discontent amid the COVID-19 outbreak. The ban on highlighting "controversial topics from the past" reflects a common tactic meant to obscure parallels and patterns that could help fuel public anger. Another example is a January directive on coverage of a hospital doctor’s murder by the disgruntled son of a patient, which included an order not to "link to or relate to other incidents of injured doctors."

Please cover donations of materials for fighting the epidemic to the mainland from all parts of Hong Kong society. (February 10, 2020) [Chinese]

Highlighting Hong Kongers’ support for the mainland was likely intended to bolster Beijing’s consistent domestic narrative on the territory’s mass protests in 2019 and 2020: that, despite the scale and breadth of participation, they were the work of a narrow separatist minority in league with foreign adversaries. The authorities had been pushing similar messages of unity within Hong Kong. A Spring Festival address by new Liaison Office head Luo Huining, for example, which was the subject of an earlier leaked directive, quoted Xi Jinping’s adage that "harmony in a family makes everything successful."

Other directives sought to guide coverage of other channels of support to Hubei, from other parts of China, celebrities, the People’s Liberation Army, and from foreign countries.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/10/minitrue-diary-february-9-10-2020-epidemic-controversies-hong-kong-donations/