Scroll down for Part 2.–Kirk Denton
Source: China Digital Times (5/14/24)
Chengyu for Xi Jinping’s New Era (Part 1)
By Alexander Boyd
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often four-character, literary expressions that are the kernel of a larger tale. The following New Era chengyu are all references to infamous incidents that have taken place within the last calendar year. Consistent with much of CDT’s 2024 coverage, the chengyu introduced below center on economic pain: impoverished farmers, distressed creditors, penny-pinching landlords—even cash-strapped police departments. Many also focus on official malfeasance: petty despotism, official greed, and wanton enforcement of the law. Without further ado, here are the five entries that make up Part 1 of CDT’s “New Era chengyu” compilation:
Yunhao Blocks the Plow (云浩止耕, Yúnhào zhǐ gēng)
Ji Doesn’t Know the Law (纪不懂法, Jì bù dǒng fǎ)
Repaying Debt With Prison Time (以刑化债, yǐ xíng huà zhài)
Calculating Damages by Lantern-Light (提灯定损, tídēng dìng sǔn)
Fishing the High Seas (远洋捕捞, yuǎnyáng bǔlāo) [Chinese]
Yunhao Blocks the Plow (云浩止耕, Yúnhào zhǐ gēng)
In April of this year, an undercover reporting team captured a shocking incident in Inner Mongolia’s Kailu County: village cadres blocking villagers from plowing fields on the eve of the make-or-break planting season. The reporters were with the state-run outlet Reports on China’s Three Rural Issues (中国三农发布, Zhōngguó sānnóng fābù) and they had traveled to Kailu after receiving a mass of complaints from villagers that officials were prohibiting them from planting—unless the villagers agreed to pay extortionate fees. The provenance of the dispute dates back two decades, when a nearly 1,000 acre (5600 mu) parcel of land was contracted out to villagers on a thirty-year lease. Since then, through diligent irrigation and stewardship, the land has been transformed from a palace where “even rabbits wouldn’t shit” to a viable corn field. But this year, local cadres were demanding that villagers pay an extra 200 yuan per mu tax before being allowed to plant—a fee that villagers insisted was illegal. The undercover state-media reporters captured footage of cadres blocking plows, accusing villagers of illegally occupying public land, and chiding them that calling the police was useless. One official, the village deputy Party secretary Ji Yunhao, was particularly egregious in his conduct, threatening villagers, “So what if 110 [China’s 911 emergency hot-line number] officers arrive? The higher-ups ordered me to collect money, so that’s what I’m going to do.” Ji was relieved of his position after the video attracted public criticism. However, there has been no official statement on Ji’s seemingly falsified resume, which came to light after his bullying behavior went viral.
“Yunhao Blocks the Plow” is a reference to the brash thuggery of local cadres—an all-too-common problem in rural China. Last year, an effort to professionalize the policing of agriculture through the introduction of a new corps of law enforcement officials (derisively termed “nongguan,” a play on the unpopular urban enforcers known as “chengguan”) was met with widespread backlash, both online and in the countryside. The Economist quoted a Henan farmer’s reaction to the news about the nongguan: “’All crows under heaven are equally black,’ and all cadres equally dishonest.” Attempting to shed light on these rural issues, however, remains taboo. Despite the fact that state media conducted the initial reporting, online essays and articles that drew a connection between Ji’s actions and hollow propaganda about the “closeness” of the state and the people were censored. Other reports that criticized the tepid follow-up reporting on the incident were also taken down by censors. Despite such censorship, “Yunhao Blocks the Plow” endures as a mocking reminder of the resistance of Chinese farmers to the pretty tyranny of local authorities.
Ji Doesn’t Know the Law (纪不懂法, Jì bù dǒng fǎ)
This chengyu derives from the same incident described above. Village deputy Party secretary Ji Yunhao, when asked by journalists about the contract signed by villagers, responded: “Don’t ask me, I don’t know the law!” The haughty pronouncement drew immediate comparisons to another New Era chengyu: “Law? Funny” (你法我笑, nǐ fǎ wǒ xiào). In that 2017 case, a legal affairs cadre in Jiangxi province told a villager whose house had been demolished, “I think it’s kind of funny that you talk about ‘rule of law,’” after another cadre had explained, with surprising frankness, “Some things are driven by the government, not dealt with according to laws and regulations. In short, power supersedes the law.” The quotes appeared in a state-media documentary investigation into improper behavior by village cadres. “Law? Funny” is now shorthand for China’s “lack of rule of law,” even though rule of law is enshrined as one of the CCP’s “12 Core Socialist Values.” [For more on this incident, see CDT’s new 20th anniversary e-book.] Similar incidents abound. A recent case in Qinghai province—in which a lawyer discovered that a judge from a higher court was using a WeChat group chat to secretly direct the lower-court judge’s adjudication of a hearing for 12 defendants accused of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles”—has spurred the creation of yet another New Era chengyu: “The Judge Behind the Curtain” (垂帘听审, chuílián tīngshěn). “Ji Doesn’t Know the Law” is one of the latest chengyu to speak to public frustration over injustice in cases where politics appears to take command of the law.
A Chinese-language video of Ji Yunhao’s conduct is available below:
Repaying Debt With Prison Time (以刑化债, yǐ xíng huà zhài)
China’s debt-laden local governments are on the edge of a financial crisis. Some of these governments have taken a novel approach to relieving their fiscal burden: arresting creditors who sue to have debts repaid, a phenomenon that has given rise to the chengyu “Repaying Debt With Prison Time.” A recent case in Guizhou is particularly illustrative. A Guizhou entrepreneur and her legal team were detained for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after suing the Shuicheng district government for hundreds of millions of yuan that she was owed for a failed development project. The brazen mass arrest, which came after the entrepreneur rejected a 16 million yuan settlement for the 220 million yuan she was allegedly owed, provoked widespread public outrage and criticism of the continued use of “picking quarrels,” a notorious pocket crime. The nebulously-defined crime has been used to target a wide variety of people the state finds troublesome: the “Feminist Five,” activists against sexual harassment; Sun Dawu, a billionaire businessman; a woman wearing a kimono in Suzhou; and many of the young protestors who participated in the White Paper Movement in November 2022. “Repaying Debt with Prison Time” is the latest expression of pessimism over the state of China’s economy and the future of its entrepreneurs, despite incessant official proclamations that “there is an atmosphere of optimism throughout the country.”
Calculating Damages by Lantern-Light (提灯定损, tídēng dìng sǔn)
A rural Jiangxi landlord who used an industrial-grade floodlight during a pregnant renter’s move-out inspection and then charged her 10,000 yuan in damages (on an apartment that rented for just over 1,000 yuan monthly) inspired this new chengyu. Its target is the nickel-and-dime attitude of landlords who charge renters exorbitant fees for minor damages. As China’s property market slows, renting has become a more attractive option for Chinese couples. Accordingly, the issue of renters’ rights has moved into the spotlight. Even top state-media outlet Xinhua weighed in on the controversy: “The only way to solve ‘calculating damages by lantern-light’ is by ‘lighting the way for you’—building a more transparent, regulated renters’ marketplace by lighting the lantern of rule of law and regulation, encouraging more harmonious landlord-tenant relations, and thus lighting the lantern in our hearts.”
Ironically, after the female tenant’s complaints about the excessive damage charges, local officials found that the house she had been renting was illegally constructed and ordered it condemned.
Fishing the High Seas (远洋捕捞, yuǎnyáng bǔlāo)
This is a new term in legal circles for public security officials’ cross-provincial “pursuit-of-profit policing.” In cases of “fishing the high seas,” police from one province or city cross into another to pursue “major cases” (with potentially lucrative outcomes) with no clear jurisdictional authority or public safety imperative. A recent example reported by China Business Journal documented an instance in which officers with the public security bureau (PSB) of Shunde District in Foshan, Guangdong province, traveled to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, to detain a number of executives and finance department employees of a popular streaming platform on dubious charges of running an illegal gambling operation—without any evidence of a negative impact on the citizens of Shunde. The Shunde PSB confiscated all of the company’s “illegal” gains, transferring over three hundred million yuan directly into its own bank accounts, and bankrupting the Wuhan company. The targeted company steadfastly denied all wrongdoing and accused the Shunde police department of outright robbery. A Guangdong court later found the Shunde public security bureau’s behavior to be illegal.
Cross-provincial policing has long been used as a tool to suppress dissent. In 2022, a writer who questioned the integrity of a Zhejiang police department in a Weibo post made at 1:45 a.m. was surprised to be “invited to tea” by police who had traveled from Zhejiang to question him. Earlier this year, police from Yanjiao, a commuter city on the outskirts of Beijing, threatened a Xi’an resident after the latter shared a video of Yanjiao police harassing a CCTV reporter broadcasting live from the site of a gas-leak explosion that killed seven and injured 27. The use of cross-provincial policing to replenish municipal coffers, though, appears to be novel—at least in the form described above. “Fishing the High Seas” is, then, yet another derisive term for local governments’ increasingly desperate and high-handed methods of extracting wealth from the citizenry.
=====
Source: China Digital Times (5/29/24)
Chengyu for Xi Jinping’s New Era (Part 2): Malice, Ducks, and Human Resources
By Alexander Boyd
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often four-character, literary expressions that are the kernel of a larger tale. New Era chengyu are references to infamous incidents that have taken place under Xi’s rule, either satirical twists on classic phrases or new coinages that fit the form. Two weeks ago, CDT published Part 1 of the series, introducing the phrases: “Yunhao Blocks the Plow (云浩止耕, Yúnhào zhǐ gēng),” a reference to the brash thuggery of some rural cadres; “Ji Doesn’t Know the Law (纪不懂法, Jì bù dǒng fǎ),” a lament about the lack of rule of law; “Repaying Debt With Prison Time (以刑化债, yǐ xíng huà zhài),” on fiscally distressed local governments’ novel debt repayment strategies; “Calculating Damages by Lantern-Light (提灯定损, tídēng dìng sǔn),” on nickel-and-diming landlords; and “Fishing the High Seas (远洋捕捞, yuǎnyáng bǔlāo),” about predatory “for-profit” policing.
While the previous post’s chengyu focused primarily on economic pain, this week’s sampling references a diffuse range of complaints ranging from official “gaslighting,” to the natalist pressure campaign aimed at women, to draconian zero-COVID rhetoric:
Point at a Rat and Call it a Duck (指鼠为鸭, zhǐ shǔ wèi yā)
Reproduce, Reproduce—Without Rest (生生不息, shēngshēng bù xī)
Malicious Homecoming (恶意返乡, èyì fǎnxiāng)
Point at a Rat and Call it a Duck (指鼠为鸭, zhǐ shǔ wèi yā)
In 2023, a student at a Jiangxi university found a rat’s head in their cafeteria food. After a photo of the rat’s head went viral, a local official claimed—to widespread ridicule and mockery—that the “foreign object” in the student’s food was actually a duck’s neck, a local delicacy. That claim birthed the chengyu “point at a rat and call it a duck,” a criticism of official willingness to blatantly lie to, or “gaslight,” the public. The phrase is a play on the traditional chengyu “point at a deer and call it a horse” (指鹿为马, zhǐ lù wéi mǎ), which dates back to the Qin Dynasty and means to deliberately misrepresent something. The original chengyu has also become newly relevant due to a recent burst in cases of nationalists rousing anti-Japanese sentiment by inventing evidence of Japanese infiltration. In a recent example, a nationalist deceptively cropped an advertisement that featured a traditional Chinese fan to make it appear to be the “rising sun” flag of the Imperial Japanese Army.
“Point at a rat and call it a duck” is a sensitive phrase in China. When the phrase first went viral, some Taobao vendors attempted to capitalize on it by creating cute toys featuring a rat-duck hybrid creature. Taobao took the toys off shelves, a sign of their political salience. While the officials responsible for the incident were eventually punished, the phrase lives on in netizen slang as an allusion to the mendacity of officials.
Reproduce, Reproduce—Without Rest (生生不息, shēngshēng bù xī)
In response to China’s population decline, the Chinese Communist Party has launched a natalist campaign aimed at pressuring women to have more children. To-date, the campaign has used a mix of shaming tactics against childless couples, incentivizing marriage, and relentless propaganda to encourage more births. The reasons for China’s demographic decline are complicated. Although births began decreasing before the institution of the One Child Policy in the late 1970s, it clearly had a profound impact on the decision to have children or not. Economic factors matter too: China has the world’s second highest cost of raising children. Contemporary politics cannot be discounted either: “We are the last generation,” a quote from an infamous incident during the 2022 Shanghai lockdown, has become a slogan for China’s disenchanted—framing the choice not to have children as an expression of political dissatisfaction.
Enter this latest chengyu, “reproduce, reproduce—without rest,” a dark reframing of a classic that literally means something akin to “be fruitful and multiply” but is often used to praise resilience in the face of adversity. The WeChat account “Encyclopedia of Tasteless Chinese Jokes” (中式没品笑话百科, zhōngshì méi pǐn xiàohuà bǎikē) gave the chengyu’s new definition as: “A description of determined youth who proactively respond to the strategic imperatives of an aging country by maintaining China’s population resources.” The clunky language mimics the often jargony propaganda around increasing the birth rate. The heart of the anger over the government’s pronatalist campaign stems from this last line “population resources.” Many view the population push as an effort to have more humans to exploit for economic and political power, an anger captured in the viral term “humineral,” a portmanteau of a portmanteau of “person” and “ore/mineral” in the original Chinese.
Malicious Homecoming (恶意返乡, èyì fǎnxiāng)
A particularly infamous chengyu is “malicious homecoming,” a legacy of China’s zero-COVID policy. In 2022, a county official in Henan lambasted migrant laborers hoping to head home for the Spring Festival holidays, warning them: “First you’ll be put into quarantine, and then you’ll be arrested,” without regard to their vaccination status or test results. The county also issued a press release accusing such travelers of partaking in “malicious homecomings.” Spring Festival is often the only time migrant laborers are able to return home to see family and friends. The use of “malicious” instantly went viral. One Weibo user joked, “After maliciously demanding our unpaid wages, we maliciously return to our hometowns.”
The government’s pandemic usage of “malicious” to characterize previously innocuous activities as somehow nefarious sparked outrage. In August 2022, it again went viral after police arrested four Jiangxi men for “malicious mourning” after they evaded lockdown to attend an elderly family member’s funeral. In November 2022, Xinjiang’s cyberspace regulator announced an investigation into three men for “maliciously commenting” on a COVID-related press conference without detailing the nature of the comments, which were likely aimed at raising awareness of the harsh Urumqi lockdown. (In September 2022, a leaked censorship directive revealed that authorities were fighting a “smokeless war” against online discussion of the lockdowns in Xinjiang.)
The phrase has been appropriated as a stock attack on government rhetoric. After China’s botched evacuation of its citizens from Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, one Weibo user expressed their frustration with censorship of criticism of the evacuation effort by turning around the government’s favorite phrase: “Malicious screenshots, malicious compilation, malicious satire. Malicious exposure of past humiliations, malicious Weibo posting. No screenshots! No compilation! No satire! No exposing past humiliations! No Weibo posting! No malice at all!!! No breathing! No resistance!”