Source: China Media Project (10/23/22)
Five Firm Grasps for the World
In a new buzzword emerging from the 20th National Congress of the CCP, Xi Jinping is front and center, and the whole world is encompassed by his visionary ideas.
By CMP Staff

On the front page of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper yesterday, a new buzzword was born. Introducing the “Five Firm Grasps” (五个牢牢把握). Appearing in a prominent headline to the right of the masthead in the People’s Daily, the phrase was meant to condense the “spirit” of the 20^th National Congress of the CCP, conveying to Party members the essentials they were meant to take away.

Those essentials are the need to:

Firmly grasp the major significance of the work of the past 5 years and the great transformation of the 10 years of the New Era (要牢牢把握过去5年工作和新时代10年伟大变革的重大意义)

Firmly grasp the world view and methodology of the Thought of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era (牢牢把握新时代中国特色社会主义思想的世界观和方法论)

Firmly grasp the mission and task of promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people through Chinese-style modernization (牢牢把握以中国式现代化推进中华民族伟大复兴的使命任务)

Firmly grasp the important demand of leading a great social revolution through a great self-revolution (牢牢把握以伟大自我革命引领伟大社会革命的重要要求)

Firmly grasp unity and struggle as the requirements of the times (牢牢把握团结奋斗的时代要求) Continue reading →

Source: China Media Project (3/12/22)
When War Isn’t War
While for much of the world the conflict in Ukraine is “Russia’s war,” Chinese media have opted for other terms, including “special military operation.” In this closer look at Chinese media coverage, we document this official framing — but also find some surprising and encouraging exceptions.
By David Bandurski

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks under a camouflage net in a trench as he visits the war-hit Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Dec. 6, 2021. Image by manhhai available at Flickr.com under CC license.

Throughout most of the world, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is “Russia’s war.” But as international media have reported, China has refused to talk about an “invasion” or a “war” in the two weeks since Vladimir Putin launched his military attacks. In its first press conference on February 24, the day attacks began, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs set the tone by saying that China had noted Russia’s “special military operation in eastern Ukraine.”

Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) seemed finally to break the pattern Thursday in a meeting with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in which he said that China supports “a ceasefire to stop the war.” Nevertheless, voices critical of Putin, or even calling for peace, continue to be systematically removed from Chinese social media platforms, and content critical of Ukraine and the West, particularly the United States, proliferates.

To examine China’s framing of “Russia’s war” more closely, the China Media Project studied a randomized sample of reports over the past seven days. From among 721 total reports returned in the Wisenews database including the term “Russia-Ukraine” (俄乌) in mainland China, we isolated a subset of these reports including the word “war” (战争), yielding a total of 114 articles (87 print and 27 online). Randomizing these results we focused on just 25 articles for analysis. Continue reading →

I wonder if anyone has seen signs of awareness or discussion in China, of the fact that China is really a settler-colonialist empire with its own “colonizers” in Xinjiang, Tibet and beyond.

I don’t think its possible that thinking people in China don’t realise there are direct and striking parallels to other empires and settler-colonialist projects in history.

But this is of course difficult to talk about in China, which is described by the government only as a victim and not an aggressor, just like Putin’s aggressor Russia does. In fact the whole Chinese mythology of peacefulness, which dominates in schools and in media, is a monstruous denial of the truth of China’s bloody history of conquest, inculcated in everyone like a gigantic taboo — along the lines of what Margaret Hillenbrand talks about in her book Negative Exposures: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China.

I wrote before about how Westerners have been duped by this — many are susceptible because of they suffer from a self-centered West-and-the-rest syndrome.

But the main target of the ruse and cover-up of China’s imperial legacy is the Chinese people. Yet we also know they can’t fool all Chinese people all the time. So I am wondering if others have seen signs of counter-awareness — even in the recent totalitarian decade?

Magnus Fiskesjö < nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: China Media Project (2/18/22)
The CMP Dictionary: Colonized 殖人
By Stella Chen

At left, the image from a Dior photoshoot that brought severe criticism of photographer Chen Man (at right) online.

The term “colonized,” or zhiren (殖人), is an epithet often applied by nationalists online in China to attack those who hold opposing views on political and human rights issues. Generally, the term describes individuals who are seen as having been seduced and colonized by Western culture and values, but the term can sometimes also serve as an adjective describing certain subjects as examined through a generalized Western gaze.

Over the past three years, beginning around 2019 and Hong Kong protests over a planned bill allowing extraditions to mainland China, the term “colonized” (殖人) arose as a way for Chinese internet users to criticize and belittle calls by Hong Kong protestors for greater democracy – this being seen as stemming from a lingering colonial mentality after more than a century of British rule in the territory.

By the summer and fall of 2019, protests in Hong Kong were growing increasingly tense and unruly, with protestors facing off against police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. On July 1, 2019, the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from the UK to China, protestors stormed the premises of the Legislative Council (LegCo), defacing the regional emblem of Hong Kong and spraying graffiti on the walls. Several weeks later, protestors defaced the entry to China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong. Though many of the protests were peaceful, these acts in particular angered many Chinese online, and they were reported in the state media (which played up the “chaos”) as “absolutely intolerable.” Continue reading →