Some observers in China and abroad have pointed out that since Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in mid-November 2012 and thus the most powerful man in China, a distinctive feature of Xi’s regime has been the intensification of his personal propaganda and even cult of personality in the official Chinese media, often in the form of pro-people shows. Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Guizhou is the latest Xi Jinping pro-people show and personal propaganda by the official Chinese media under Xi’s control. This propaganda has led some observers and critics to compare Xi Jinping with his admiration for former Communist Party dictator Mao Zedong.
Personal Propaganda vs. Cult of the Individual Propaganda
Observers point out that personal propaganda and cult of personality propaganda are taboo in China today for the average person, the average official and even the most senior officials, with the exception of Xi Jinping; this exception is displayed daily in the official Chinese media and in the officially controlled online media. After Xi’s visit to Guizhou, this display has become even more concentrated. In the past few days, the Chinese official media has been filled with Xi propaganda as follows.
— Nine photos Read Xi Jinping’s Guizhou visit
–Xi Jinping’s Guizhou visit, these details are intriguing
–Striving to create a new future of colorful Guizhou with rich people and beautiful ecology
–[Record] General Secretary to the grassroots, the most sincere warm hearts
— General Secretary Xi Jinping went to Guizhou on the eve of the Spring Festival to visit the cadres and masses of all ethnic groups sparked a warm response
–The Standing Committee of the CPC Tianjin Municipal Committee held a meeting to study and implement the important speech of General Secretary Xi Jinping during his inspection and research in Guizhou
China’s veteran human rights and democracy activist Wei Jingsheng says Xi Jinping has been putting on this kind of flashy pro-people show since he came to power and then deploying his drummers to sing his praises, but the Chinese people are not confused.
Commenting on Xi Jinping’s latest pro-people show in Guizhou, Wei Jingsheng said the show is clearly meant to prove that Xi cares about the people, but “it actually shows that you don’t care about the people in general. Because you have this flaw, you need to do these shows to supplement it. This is a very important point.”
Wei Jingsheng’s assertion that Xi does not care about the people is also shared by many observers and the Chinese public. For example, at the beginning of his rise to power, Xi once touted the fact that he traveled without road closures to try to minimize disruptions to the people in order to demonstrate his pro-people approach. But as Time went on, authorities everywhere Xi Jinping went were on the verge of paralyzing half a city or even a city, showing that he and his subordinates did not care about the livelihood of the people.
For example, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1, 2017, when Xi Jinping led the other six Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee to Shanghai, all transportation hubs in downtown Shanghai came to a halt, and the normally dense traffic arteries and overpasses became empty all of a sudden, as can be clearly seen on satellite images. News and data on how much economic damage Xi Jinping’s trip caused to people and governments everywhere is a taboo subject and a state secret strictly forbidden by the Chinese Communist authorities.
In addition, critics and observers have mentioned that Xi’s pro-democracy show propaganda has often gone awry since he came to power, resulting in his propaganda not only failing to add to his luster, but becoming a drag that is difficult for him to shake off.
For example, in late December 2013, when he visited Beijing‘s Qingfeng bun store to eat buns, the official media immediately publicized how he was a people’s advocate and how he casually walked into a popular restaurant to eat buns with civilians, but then a Chinese netizen showed with second-by-second evidence that the official media’s public coincidental encounter with Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s general secretary, at the Qingfeng bun store was a drama staged in coordination with the official media. Subsequently, the nicknames “Emperor Qingfeng” and “baozi” became widespread among Chinese netizens and the public, and have become taboo words that the Communist Party’s Internet opinion control authorities have had to constantly police and work to block.
How Pro-People Xi Jinping Really Is
California State University, Los Angeles professor Song Yongyi has studied the history of the Chinese Communist Party for many years, especially after 1949. He, too, is unimpressed with the Xi Jinping pro-people show that Xi Jinping and his propaganda team have moved to perform.
Commenting on the latest wave of Xi Jinping’s pro-people propaganda unfolding in China’s official media, Song Yongyi said, “You say he’s pro-people, but he’s not pro-people when he sees there’s danger. For example, when the Wuhan pneumonia Epidemic first occurred, he did not go there. Previously, Wen Jiabao or Hu Jintao, where there is a big disaster, they went. He just does not go, he is not afraid of death.”
Song Yongyi’s comments clearly refer to the deadly Wuhan pneumonia outbreak (later renamed the novel coronavirus outbreak) in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and early 2020, when Xi Jinping was in seclusion for a long time, seemingly ignoring the outbreak, so much so that the Communist Party’s official day-by-day record of his leadership in the fight against the epidemic was blank for two weeks.
A few hours after the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan forced the city to be closed, Xi delivered a televised address to the nation on January 23, 2020, without mentioning Wuhan, the closure of the city, or the epidemic. After front-line medical staff had worked hard under extremely difficult conditions to gain initial control of the outbreak, Xi’s final visit to Wuhan was still ten meters away from the television screen, “visiting” front-line medical staff and patients via video.
Many observers, like Song Yongyi, see this approach as a stark contrast to his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who visited medical staff and patients at the scene of the Sars outbreak nearly 20 years ago.
At the same time, many Chinese citizens and netizens have complained that Xi did nothing to address the plight of people in the affected areas during the massive floods that hit many parts of southern China in 2020, and that the Chinese media under his control did their best to avoid reporting on the affected areas or the disaster, or issued misleading so-called “positive” propaganda reports, such as the flood-soaked At the height of the floods in southern China, Xi Jinping went to Jilin in the northeast to check on corn fields and make vague declarations about Food production.
Critics and observers have pointed out that since he came to power, Xi and his propaganda team have repeatedly staged Xi Jinping’s pro-people show, but Xi himself has shown time and again that he is not “most concerned about the poor people, how they are fed and housed,” as he and his propaganda team have preached.
In late November and early December 2017, thousands of working people and their families making a living in Beijing were evicted from their legally rented homes in the middle of winter, driven out into the streets, and then out of the city. Critics say many hoped that Xi Jinping, who claims to care for the needy, would step in to stop the brutal actions of Beijing authorities, but Xi has ignored their plight while talking about a “toilet revolution. Recently, the Communist Party authorities themselves have admitted that the “toilet revolution” launched by Xi Jinping himself has in many places become a cosmetic project that wastes money and causes problems for the people.
Comparison of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong
Xi’s personal propaganda, which has been cascading since he came to power through the CCP’s propaganda department and the official Chinese media and online media under its jurisdiction, has led many observers to compare his personal propaganda with that of former CCP dictator Mao Zedong, who was second only to Mao in terms of concentration of power.
Song Yongyi, a scholar who has studied Chinese Communist Party history for many years, told VOA that while Xi’s personal propaganda is similar to Mao’s in many ways, there are also huge differences between the two, including the fact that Mao had a theory and Xi did not; that Mao was a kingpin who fought the world and had his self-confidence and Xi did not; that Mao was an original and Xi was an imitator, a poorly played farce, or As Marx said, the first appearance of a historical event is a drama, and the second appearance is a farce.
Song Yongyi said, “The Chinese Communist Party is that one generation is worse than the other, and it chooses its successors by reverse elimination. Every generation is basically the same. Let’s say (former General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee) Jiang Zemin is good. You say (former General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee) Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, which is inferior to Jiang Zemin? But Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun wanted to get rid of Zhao Ziyang and bring up Jiang Zemin. (Later General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee) Hu Jintao was inferior to Jiang Zemin, and now Xi Jinping is inferior to all the previous ones.”
In Song Yongyi’s view, there should be no dispute that Xi Jinping is the worst leader since the Communist Party seized power in mainland China with arms in 1949. He said, “To be fair, first of all, he (Xi Jinping) is an absolutely mediocre leader among CCP leaders. Compared to Mao Zedong, compared to Deng Xiaoping, he is definitely a mediocre leader. Compared to Hu Yaobang, compared to Zhao Ziyang, he is not comparable, and compared to Jiang Zemin, his learning is not comparable to Jiang Zemin.”
Some scholars who study the history of the Communist Party, including Song Yongyi, point out that both Xi and Mao like to proclaim that they are learned, but Xi is clearly a poor imitator of Mao in this regard as well. He often mispronounces words in his public speeches, such as “support” as “look forward to”, “exquisite” as “exquisite “The “businessman’s broad farming” is mispronounced as “businessman’s broad clothing”. Xi Jinping’s performance has frequently caused the Internet opinion control department under his leadership to go into emergency response.
In addition, Song Yongyi, who specializes in library science, suggested that Xi Jinping’s actual literacy level is elementary school level, and his propaganda team is apparently uneducated, which has led his propaganda team to promote his love of reading various Chinese and foreign masterpieces from his youth, including The Federalist Papers, a masterpiece of American constitutional thought, but there was no Chinese translation of The Federalist Papers in mainland China during Xi Jinping’s youth. But when Xi was young, there was no Chinese translation of the Federalist Papers in mainland China, and Xi Jinping’s English was not good, either in his youth or now.
How successful Xi Jinping’s pro-people performance has been
As with Xi’s usual grassroots visits, there is no way to know for sure how much of Xi’s recent visit to Guizhou was real research and how much was for show, and how many public security officers or actors were deployed by the local government to play the role of grassroots people. But in recent years, with the popularity of camera-ready cell phones, such situations, which are usually state secrets, have seen rare exposure.
In June 2015, when Xi Jinping visited Guizhou, a woman suddenly tried to stop the road and shouted her grievances at an intersection where Xi’s motorcade was about to pass, and several people jumped out from the crowd waiting calmly to welcome Xi’s motorcade. The crowd also regained its neatness and calmness within a few seconds, and then the Xi Jinping motorcade passed, and those people danced and cheered as if the whole process was a professional performance. Someone was present to capture the entire event, but the video was blocked in mainland China and can now only be seen on YouTube, an overseas video-sharing site.
Critics say that when the top and most senior leaders of the Communist Party go to the grassroots for research, the so-called masses they come into contact with are mostly plainclothes public security officers or actors, a practice that has been firmly established and institutionalized since Mao’s time. The official Chinese media, when China was relatively open after Mao’s death, reported that when Mao visited a city park during his lifetime, the local government removed all the visitors from the park and deployed public security officers to pose as pairs of tourists. When Mao Zedong met such a pair of fake couple visitors in the park, he went up to them and talked to them to understand their Family situation and Life. The public security officers could not tell the truth, so they continued to pretend to be a couple, answering Mao’s questions in the name of the couple, so that Mao could understand “public sentiment”.
Wei Jingsheng, a senior Chinese human rights and democracy activist, said that Xi Jinping and his admired and imitated predecessor, Mao Zedong, both like to promote themselves and deceive the public through pro-people shows; during Mao’s time, the Chinese Communist authorities deceived the people, and most of them really believed them, except for a few who knew the inside story. For example, during the famine caused by the CCP-created economic crisis, the CCP propagandized that Mao did not eat meat in order to share the suffering of the people, only to learn later that he ate all the food from the sea and mountains at that time.
Regarding the latest round of pro-people show propaganda by Xi Jinping and his propaganda team, Wei Jingsheng believes their propaganda cannot succeed, but only fail. He said, “The predecessors of the liars have cheated people so much that as a liar, you can’t use tricks that have already been recognized. Now you are still using the gimmick that has been recognized, the people look at it is haha a laugh. You’re a failure compared to your predecessors. You are just a failed liar.”
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