Protests: Don’t stirr Trouble, Comrade Jiang

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The party leadership might be concerned that Jiang Zemin’s death could lead from public mourning to an idolization of the deceased leader, and to more protests from there (rhymes with “past leaders were better than you guys at the top”).

Also, the party may want to serve a reminder of what it can do if it considers its rule threatened (rhymes with June 4, 1989).

While the current protests are heavily censored, June 4, 1989 was mentioned in yesterday’s main evening news, in a read-out Jiang Zemin obituary, even if n ot as “liu-si”, but rather as ījiǔbājiǔ nián chūn xià zhī jiāo:

As mayor and as municipal party secretary of Shanghai, Comrade Jiang Zemin led the cadres and masses in Shanghai to raise their spirits and to daring exploration, promoting great breakthroughs in Shanghai’s opening-up and its socialist modernization. The development and opening-up of Pudong was taking shape, he promoted party-building, and the building of spiritual civilization and of society saw major progress. As spring passed into summer in 1989, serious political crisis occurred in our country. Comrade Jiang Zemin supported and carried out the Party Central Commission’s correct decision to take a clear-cut stand and to fight against turmoil, and the correct decision to defend socialist state power, to protect the fundamental interests of the people, and to closely rely on the numerous party members, cadres and masses to vigorously protect Shanghai’s stability.
一九八五年，江泽民同志任上海市市长、中共上海市委副书记。一九八七年，江泽民同志在党的十三届一中全会上当选为中共中央政治局委员，并任中共上海市委书记。担任上海市长、市委书记期间，江泽民同志带领上海广大干部群众振奋精神、勇于探索，推动上海改革开放和社会主义现代化建设取得重大突破，浦东开发开放蓄势谋篇，推动党的建设、精神文明建设、社会建设取得重大进步。一九八九年春夏之交我国发生严重政治风波，江泽民同志拥护和执行党中央关于旗帜鲜明反对动乱、捍卫社会主义国家政权、维护人民根本利益的正确决策，紧紧依靠广大党员、干部、群众，有力维护上海稳定。
In 1989, at the 13th Central Committee’s fourth plenary session, Comrade Jiang Zemin was elected into the politburo’s standing committee, and the central committee’s general secretary. The same year, the 13th central committee’s fifth plenary session made  Jiang Zemin should become chairman of the party’s central military commission.  In 1990, at the 7th National People’s Congress’ third session, he was elected chairman of the People’s Republic of China’s central military commission.
一九八九年，在党的十三届四中全会上，江泽民同志当选为中共中央政治局常委、中央委员会总书记。同年，党的十三届五中全会决定江泽民同志为中共中央军事委员会主席。一九九〇年，在七届全国人大三次会议上当选为中华人民共和国中央军事委员会主席。

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Related

王丹：就算江執政 中國也不會有民主, RTI, Dec 01, 2022
Popular History Reader, July 31, 2012
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Headlines: Guanchazhe, Shanghai, July 24

Guanchazhe, headlines at 07:30 UTC

(1)	Actual Guanchazhe article there. Wikipedia has a useful article in English on Wentian space laboratory cabin module
(2)	Link
(3)	It’s more of a rant (you wouldn’t need academics for that, but it probably looks more authoratitve this way). The article may contain some news for you however if you believe that Western sanctions against Russia are happily supported (or admired) everywhere else in the world

Uighurs yesterday is Han Chinese today

Click picture for tweet

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Related

“Uighurs Today is the Han Chinese peoples’ Tomorrow”, August 19, 2018
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SARS-Covid Outbreak: a Meeting with Experts and Entrepreneurs

While the Shanghai lockdown (which must not be called a lockdown) continued, China’s state council held a meeting “with experts and entrepreneurs” on Thursday, to “analyse economic conditions and hear ideas and suggestions about the next steps”, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Li Keqiang chaired the meeting in his capacities as member of the CPC politburo standing committee and as chief state councillor.

Main Link

Also attending were people representing China Railway Materials and Qingdao AInnovation  Technology company, stating their opinions about economic operation, company situations etc., and making suggestions about safeguarding logistics and rural capital provisions, and about promoting entrepreneurial innovation.

Mentioned as participants were deputy chief state councillor Han Zheng, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Yang Zhiyong, Bank of China researcher Guan Tao, and, as party of state officials, Hu Chunhua (politburo member and deputy chief state councillor), Liu He (same functions as Hu), Wang Yong (former SASAC chairman, now a member of the state council in charge of issues faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Xiao Jie (member of the state council and Secretary General of the State Council), Zhao Kezhi (Party Committee Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security and heading the ministry as member of the state council), and He Lifeng (member of the state council in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, NDRC).

Xinwen Lianbo, April 8, 2022, evening broadcast

You can probably imagine the importance of Zhao Kezhi’s attendance in the context of the meeting’s hardly-mentioned real topic – but it makes sense to take note of every participant mentioned in communiqués like this one by Xinhua. Their tasks may speak greater volumes than the description of the agenda.

It needs to be said that the article doesn’t exactly emphasize China’s current SARS-Covid outbreak – it is only “casually” mentioned, as one of a number of suddenly emerging factors in international and domestic environment that are confronting the economy with greater uncertainties and challenges.

The obligatory reference to Comrade Xi Jinping is made at the beginning,  although it is technically meaningless. It may, however, indicate the limits of what participants may describe or suggest during such a meeting, and also, you have to mention Xi anyway. With reference to the “sudden domestic Covid outbreak situation” (国内疫情近期多发), a need both  to keep up the faith and to face up to the difficulties is emphasized. More generally, “high-quality development” is restated, and so is a need to deepen reform and individual initiative, and “a flexibility in accepting the challenges” (应变克难). Focus is also given to stable growth, stable employment and stable prices (稳就业, 稳物价).

Li pointed out problems faced particularly by SMEs and self-employed workers & business people. Help and support them pass through the crisis is mentioned, some concrete measures too, but without detailed outlines. Concrete measures are an utmost pace by which to handle VAT rebates, and to make funds arrive at the accounts of those in need.

The primary sector is required to provide ample harvests (farming) and advanced coal production capacities (energy), and “marketization, rule of law and internationalization” are also given a mention.

The meeting ranked fourth as a news item in China’s main evening news broadcast of Xinwen Lianbo” today, after an “important speech” given by Xi Jinping at the end of the Paralympics, a reference to an editorial about the “spirit of the Beijing Olympics”, and news about a telephone conversation between Xi Jinping and the president of the Philippines.

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Circuses and Security: Putin-Xi Video Meeting on Dec 15, 2021

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The following is an excerpt from an FMPRC statement on a video meeting between Chinese party and state leader Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin, conducted on December 15.

Xinhua/FMPRC, Dec 15, 2021

According to Wan Qingsong, a Russia researcher of Shanghai’s East China Normal University, one of Putin’s topics in his video meeting with Xi in December was the issue of Russia’s drafts on “security guarantees” from NATO. While the FMPRC statement of December 15 makes no mention of these drafts or a discussion of  them, Wan quoted Russia’s TASS newsagency as saying that Xi had expressed support for the “security guarantees'” initiative (俄罗斯官方通讯社塔斯社便在报道中写道，中俄领导人会晤时，中国表达支持俄罗斯提出的“安全保障”倡议).

This could be based on a TASS communiqué that quotes Yury Ushakov, one of President Putin’s foreign-policy advisors:

The Chinese chairman pointed out that he understood Russia’s concerns and fully supported our initiative on the development of security guarantees for Russia, Ushakov added. “The parties agreed to maintain contact on the matter. We will inform our Chinese colleagues about how talks and contacts with our American and NATO partners are going,” he pointed out.

Another TASS communiqué, dated Dec 16, mostly focuses on intended CSTO-China contacts.

From the FMPRC statement:

In a bit more than a month you will visit China to take part in the Beijing Olympic Winter Games’ opening ceremony, thus showing your support for the Chinese organization of the Games through practical action. Beijing will be the first city to have hosted both the Summer and the Winter Olympics. Currently, we are making all-out efforts in accordance with the priniciples of “simple, safe and splendid, and all work has basically been done. We will achieve mutual Olympic visits, and in the following two years, China and Russia will also organize the China-Russia Year of Sports Exchange. This should also be considered an opportunity to let sports exchanges be a bridge and a bond to strengthen our two countries’ and peoples’ mutual understanding and friendship. Your visit will also be our first offline meeting in two years. When the time has come, I hope to have thorough exchanges with you on bilateral relations and major international and regional issues, and I believe that we will reach still more significant consensus. I am really looking forward to our “Winter Olympics appointment” and would like to join hands with you to “advance into the future together”, to open a new, post-Covid chapter of Chinese-Russian relations.

习近平强调，再过一个多月，你即将访华并出席北京冬奥会开幕式，以实际行动展示对中方办会的支持。北京即将成为世界上首个既举办过夏季奥运会、又举办过冬季奥运会的城市。目前，我们正按照“简约、安全、精彩”的原则全力筹备，各项工作已经基本就绪。我们将实现奥运互访，明后两年中俄还将举办中俄体育交流年。要以此为契机，让体育交流成为增进两国人民相互了解和友谊的桥梁和纽带。你这次访华也将是我们近两年来首次线下会晤。我期待同你届时就双边关系、重大国际和地区问题进行深入交流，相信我们将达成更多新的重要共识。我对我们的“冬奥之约”十分期待，愿同你携手“一起向未来”，共同开启后疫情时期中俄关系崭新篇章。

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Related

“Spezifische Vorschlage”, JR’s Ostblog, Jan 22, 2022
“Based on Putin-Xi consensus”, TASS, Dec 17, 2021
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Press Review: Xi Jinping’s New Year’s Speech comforts the Bereaved

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Guanchazhe newsitems on home page today (Sunday):

1)	Tianjin is considerate — netizens, inasfar as their comments aren’t removed – praise the municipal authorities, including the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department, for timely information,
2)	a woman whose brother lost his life in military service (in East Turkestan) got wet eyes when listening to Xi Jinping’s new year’s speech (清澈的爱、只为中国), and
3)	an academic currently in America who believes it’s in the Chinese genes to help each other.

Guanchazhe online, Shanghai, Jan 9, 2022–

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Germany after the Federal Elections – Arithmetics of Power

Even though the German “Liberals” (the FDP) supported a coalition with the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, they would join an SPD-led “traffic-lights” coalition if the SPD should win the September 26 federal elections, Dr. Zhu Yufang, a researcher at Tongji University’s German Studies Institute wrote on Sunday morning Beijing time, in an assessment for the Shanghai online newsportal “Guanchazhe” (Observer).

Now the Social Democrats appear to have won the elections, and Dr. Zhu’s expectations can perform miracles – if they can. And that’s a big “if”.

Gains and losses, according to ARD Television / infratest-dimap projection at 21:36 UTC

Germany’s investors immediately went into the process of telling the Greens where to go. In the words of “Wirtschaftswoche”, a German weekly published in the neighborhood of Armin Laschet, the Christian Democrats’ and Bavarian Christian Socials’ (CDU/CSU) candidate for chancellor, the Greens’ path towards Laschet’s party is shorter than the FDP’s path towards the Social Democrats (SPD) and their candidate, Olaf Scholz.

If you go by German ARD television’s / infratest dimap projection published at 21:36 UTC, the CDU/CSU got 24.1 percent of the vote, narrowly beaten by the SPD with 25.8 percent. The far-right AFD would get 10.5 percent, the “Liberals” or FDP are at 11.5 percent, and the Left Party appears to remain under the 5-percent threshold that would bar it from re-entering the Bundestag, but three directly-won mandates (or more) will secure their re-entry with whatever percentage, even with less than 5 percent of the overall vote, they may get.

Basically, any coalition among the parties that obtains a majority of the seats in the Bundestag is conceivable, with the likely exception of the far-right AFD (“Alternative für Deutschland”).

Infratest dimap / ARD Radio and Television, Sept 26, 21:36 UTC projection

This means that the SPD, the Greens and the Left combined would fall short of a majority by five seats, and this would have been the only safe SPD-led government coalition. The SPD and the Greens alone are – all according to the 21:36 UTC projection – 45 seats short of an overall majority.

The likelihood that the FDP will fill this gap – as expected by Dr. Zhu – is rather small, and the likelihood that the Greens will extract concessions from the CDU/CSU that may enable them to sell a coalition to their grassroots is fairly high. The CDU/CSU will want to remain in government at nearly all costs.

On the other hand, the FDP may try to extract concessions from the SPD which the Social Democrats are unlikely to accept.

Dr. Zhu’s expectation that Laschet will only be a transitional successor of incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel may not hold water either. When Merkel became chancellor in 2005, she looked like the actual loser of the federal elections that still brought her to power. Helmut Kohl, who became chancellor in 1982, was a joke – that didn’t keep him from becoming the longest-serving federal chancellor to date.

If Laschet should indeed be an “transitional” chancellor, it won’t be because of him in the first place, but because of the CDU/CSU. The Christian Democrats’ and their Bavarian sister party didn’t only offer the public the weakest candidate. Their platform is nothing to write home about either. After sixteen consecutive years at the helm of the federal government – all led by Merkel – they are out of ideas and of personnel.

But that has never kept them from running the country in the past.

(OK. Obviously, I hope that I’m wrong, but had to get this out of my system before going to work.)

Great Matters of the State, Educational Tour

CCTV Xinwen Lianbo, June 5, 2021

The following is a newsitem from Xinwen Lianbo (CCTV evening news) on June 5. The term 国之大者 (guózhī dàzhě), coined in recent contexts by party secretary general Xi Jinping, appears to have led to some confusion, without anyone within the propaganda department or any CPC interface with the public to clarify the meaning.

The non-communist public figures, commonly referred to dangwai in Chinese politics, appear to be facing higher expectations to be faithful agents of the Communist Party of China in the pursuit of state affairs, or intensified worshippers of the CPC as it  commermorates its 100th founding anniversary.
The Upenn language blog has done some heroic explanatory work for the term guózhī dàzhě, and as I can’t find anything more convincing online, I’ve decided to translate it as great matters of the state.
Links within blockquotes added during translation.

Celebrating the 100th founding anniversary of the Communist Party of China, officials of all non-communist parties’ central committee members and public figures and representatives with no party affiliations went to Shanghai and to Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, for visits and studies.

[视频]庆祝中国共产党成立100周年 各民主党派中央负责人和无党派人士代表赴上海 浙江嘉兴参观学习
来源：央视网2021年06月05日 19:18

CCTV online news (Xinwen Lianbo): with permission from the Communist Party of China’s central committee, the Central United Front organized a trip by members of all non-communist parties’ central committee officials and public figures and representatives with no party affiliations to Shanghai and Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, so as to admire the site of the Communist Party of China’s first congress, and the Nanhu Red Boat. A symposium was also held.

央视网消息（新闻联播）：经中共中央批准，中央统战部组织各民主党派中央负责人和无党派人士代表今天（6月5日）赴上海、浙江嘉兴，瞻仰中共一大会址和嘉兴南湖红船，并举行座谈会。

The one-hundred years of struggle have amply demonstrated that without the Communist Party there would be no New China, that without the Communist Party there would be no socialism with Chinese characteristics, the Chinese people wouldn’t have stood up, wouldn’t have prospered, wouldn’t have become stronger. It is hoped that non-communist democratic party public figure will always cherish “great matters of the state”, thoroughly study and implement Xi Jinping’s ideology of New Era socialism with Chinese characteristics, firmly develop party history education, always faithfully maintain the leadership of the Communist Party of China, keep to the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics, strengthen the joining of forces of party construction, and unite in the common effort of promoting the development of multi-party cooperation, so as to create a beautiful future for the Chinese people and the Chinese nation.

中国共产党百年奋斗历程充分表明，没有共产党就没有新中国，没有共产党就没有中国特色社会主义，中国人民就不可能站起来、富起来、强起来。希望各民主党派、无党派人士始终胸怀“国之大者”，深入学习贯彻习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想，扎实开展中共党史学习教育，始终不渝坚持中国共产党的领导，走中国特色社会主义道路，加强中国特色社会主义参政党建设，协力推进多党合作事业发展，共同创造中国人民和中华民族的美好未来。

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Related

Political parties in China, Wiki, last edited June 6

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