One Page Says It All

As anyone might have guessed, the front page of today’s People’s Daily is dominated by the story of Xi Jinping’s political report yesterday to the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The page is a riot of red headlines.

The largest headline reads: “19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party Opens in Beijing.” Immediately below: “Xi Jinping Represents the 18th Central Committee in Making a Report to the Congress.”

The smaller, non-bolded headline above the main headline is essentially the theme of Xi Jinping’s political report: “Obtaining Victory in the Building of a Moderately Well-Off Society; Seizing Great Victories in New Era Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” (决胜全面建成小康社会 夺取新时代中国特色社会主义伟大胜利). The bolded phrase above is a portion of Xi Jinping’s new “banner term,” or qizhiyu (旗帜语), missing only the word “thought” (思想). We have identified Xi’s full “banner term” as The Thought of New Era Socialism With Chinese Characteristics (新时代中国特色社会主义思想). We can expect to see this phrase — or perhaps eventually a shortened crowning form, “Xi Jinping Thought” — quite regularly in the People’s Daily in the future.

If you have any lingering doubts about the integrity of this phrase, or its importance, you need only follow the explications of it in the state media. This article on the Xinhua News Agency website yesterday bears the headline: “These 8 Things Are Clear in The Thought of New Era Socialism With Chinese Characteristics.” So this report, like quite a number of others, uses Xi Jinping’s banner term in the headline, then proceeds to explicate it.

But notice the visuals in the article too. At the top is a deep red image, the Great Hall of the People in the background, with the golden characters: “The Thought of New Era Socialism With Chinese Characteristics.”

Continuing with today’s People’s Daily, the smaller subheads below the main headline read: “Xi Jinping points out that through a long period of struggle, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. This is a new historical direction our country’s development.” Again, this is setting up Xi Jinping’s banner term. The idea is that we have witnessed the end of one era, spanning Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, and we are now on to the next era.

In many places online now, you can also see the three characters meaning “New Era” (新时代), which will almost surely become shorthand in many cases for Xi’s banner term. The next section of the subheads contains this bit, again about historical continuity of ideas, with an emphasis on the new: “The thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics clearly adheres to and develops socialism with Chinese characteristics, and its principal task is to realize socialist modernization and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”

In that last quote, I left off a bit on the end about the building of a “powerful national of modernized socialism” (社会主义现代化强国). But of course that’s important as well, and there is strong suggestion in Xi’s political report that China’s particular brand of governance, which it is sometimes now calling the “China Plan” (中国方案), is a model for countries around the world.

Of course, we can’t forget the bit of text next to the masthead. That, as it clearly states, is the theme of the congress: “Not neglecting our original intent (不忘初心), steadfastly bearing in mind our mission (牢记使命), raising the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, decisively achieving a comprehensively well-off society, seizing the great victory of new era socialism with Chinese characteristics (夺取新时代中国特色社会主义伟大胜利), struggling tirelessly to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”

And that says it all, though as we have said we will be unpacking this document for many weeks.