Does Xi Jinping use WeChat?

So far, China's decision-making process to abandon dynamic zeroing is still a mystery. Let's imagine a possible situation:

The head of the Central Propaganda Department or a few members of the Standing Committee came to find Xi. They figured out how to use language to express the seriousness of the situation without appearing too flustered. "Now there are some protests in various places, mainly started by students. They are dissatisfied with the continuous blockade and demand the end of the blockade."

"How serious?" Xi asked.

The reporter carefully showed the protest videos collected online, and then said: "Although there are very few elements in the report, some people shouted 'step down', and some people responded...We don't need to over-magnify this. The representativeness of the group, but the bad influence they may have must not be ignored.”

Xi, who claimed that he "personally commanded and personally deployed" the entire China's fight against the epidemic, thought for a while, and said, "Recently, there are more and more cases in Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Beijing. It seems that it is very difficult to prevent them. A while ago I went to Indonesia and Thailand held a meeting, no one wore a mask, and the people saw life as usual. It’s also good that our Chinese Communist Party values public opinion the most, and now may be the time to change our strategy.”

He thought to himself, since the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is over, there is no need to worry about the fact that the whole population flocking to the hospital will turn into a social risk. Originally, I wanted to test the political loyalty and execution ability of the local chiefs through the epidemic prevention policy, at least until after the two sessions next year. Therefore, the Politburo meeting held on November 10 only said to "optimize" the epidemic prevention, and did not say that it would be changed. . I didn't expect everyone to be unable to hold on, it's a pity.

He said: "It's just that we have made so many clearing efforts in the early stage. The current change must pay attention to guiding public opinion. It should not become a reason for the public to distrust the party and the government, let alone an opportunity for foreign forces to sabotage. Let the common people feel The rationality of the decision-making of the party and the state, and the medical treatment must also cooperate as much as possible.”

"That's for sure. The general secretary can rest assured. China is now relaxing the epidemic prevention measures, and the death rate of the people is much lower than that of Western countries such as the United States. I will ask the Central Propaganda Department to pay more attention to the management of public opinion."

I didn't expect the boss to be so straightforward. But when did the boss have the idea that "the virus is actually endless"? They didn't dare to ask too much. After all, a few days ago, the party media was still "unwavering in insisting on dynamic clearing."

China finally gave up clearing. On the surface, "public opinion" has played a role, but the core is that "the regime cannot be affected." In the past three years, the anger of those residents who were sterilized by the epidemic prevention personnel as names who invaded their houses, those who couldn't stand the isolation and economic pressure jumped off the building again and again, and those wailing and debates on social media, which one is not public opinion? Has he ever heard of it? Did you feel it when you heard it?

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About five years ago, a friend in the cultural circle in Shanghai asked me, "Do you think Xi Jinping uses WeChat?" At that time, I thought to myself: What kind of problem is this, of course not...right? How could he accept that WeChat's monitoring mechanism monitored him? If you want to communicate, the top management must have their own set of methods, whether it is another closed online communication software, or wearing a special small ring on your hand like in the 007 movie, you can press a button or turn a direction to send a special message, Other members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo or secretaries can receive...; in short, how can it be possible to use WeChat with hundreds of millions of people? Not only is it unsafe, but it also has too little "class distinction" (yes, the most class-breaking organizations often attach the most importance to class distinction, but they don't call it that). So I replied, "Probably not."

"Then how does he know and feel the public opinion?" It turned out that her question was this. The friend asked again: "If he has WeChat, who is his circle of friends?"

If you want to know public opinion, is the circle of friends on WeChat important? High-level executives have a lot of work to do every day, so we don't necessarily get anything if we have time to swipe our mobile phone for an hour, and most of it is a waste of time.

However, it was not until the closure of Shanghai from March to May 2022 that we deeply realized the impact of WeChat Moments as public opinion. Several times, many of my WeChat friends would repost the same article, and the accumulated resonance brought a powerful shock, as if the power was not summed up but multiplied. You'll know there's quite a group of people who are grieving and wanting something, and a case or a good story says it all for them.

For example, the article "The Way Back to Yanjiao" in March talked about how people who lived in Yanjiao and worked in Beijing were "stuck" on both sides of the epidemic prevention policy, and the process lacked dignity; perhaps it was to keep the article alive. The author's words are euphemistic, earnest and even humble, but they are even more distressing.

The most classic is that at the end of April, a Shanghainese edited and produced a video called "The Sound of April", using various recordings that were actually circulated on the Internet to connect the suffering of Shanghainese during the lockdown. That night, suddenly everyone in the circle of friends swarmed up, reposting the "Voice of April" on various platforms, and even reposting the video or title backwards, just to race against the network administrators, before each deleted post was taken off the shelf, Let a little more people have the opportunity to see the video.

The first few times I watched "Voice of April", I just left Shanghai and was in Beijing, and every time I watched it, I cried and shed tears. In the past few years, I have been living in Shanghai from time to time. Most of my WeChat friends are from various occasions of running news or meeting friends in private. During the closure of the city in April and May this year, there were several waves of "resonance moments" in which a large number of similar articles were reposted in the circle of friends at the same time, including the news that a certain Shanghai epidemic prevention official committed suicide under high pressure. It is frightening to watch Trembling and helpless, it is all a group of people who can't even take a step from the house to talk about silently on the Internet. The only thing they can do is read and forward it.

However, does the supreme leader of the 1.4 billion Chinese need to read WeChat to gain public opinion? Regardless of the fact that Xi Jinping’s circle of friends (if he really uses WeChat) may be reposting Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily’s flattering articles, in addition to secretly using an anonymous account to search another social platform before the network administrator deletes the article Apart from Weibo, what other channels do national leaders want to know the real public opinion?

Do not underestimate this issue. In Wu Si's "Unspoken Rules", there is an article titled "The emperor is also taken advantage of". Taking the Ming Dynasty as an example, it shows that the emperor who held all the power was still deceived. , I don't know if the jester is playing power arbitrarily. Emperor Chongzhen of Ming Dynasty, who hanged himself "martyred for the country", wrote before his death: "I have my own deficiencies, lack of virtue, and I have provoked the blame of the heavens. But all this is because the ministers misunderstood me."

The book says: "It is said that the emperor is so majestic, but what we see is clearly a big man who is deaf and blind." Theoretically, modern countries, especially after entering the Internet age, have more mechanisms However, in fact, for the head of state, how to know that all the heads of ministries and local officials have done a good job and behave well, and how to deal with them decisively when they know that they are not doing a good job. A very important subject for those in power. The same is true for understanding and responding to public opinion, otherwise modern politicians would not attach so much importance to platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

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Back to "How to understand public opinion".

What? Is it too inefficient to read WeChat due to information overload? Experienced people will tell you that there is a thing called "internal reference", which means internal reference news. In addition to publishing some propaganda reports, those reporters from the central government media such as Xinhua News Agency who are stationed in various parts of China actually write some that are only read by high-level officials. "reality".

The Associated Press reported in early November 2022 that the internal reference, which should be the most unscrupulous, has also changed. More than a dozen Chinese scholars, business people and state media reporters revealed that as Xi Jinping continues to consolidate power, even this internal reporting mechanism, which is not open to the public, has encountered difficulties in providing candid assessments. Any content that questions the party line may pose risks.

In an authoritarian society like China where public opinion is controlled, how important is internal reference? At least according to some news disclosed afterwards, at the end of December 2019 and the beginning of January 2020, the director of the urban department of the Hubei branch of Xinhua News Agency and the station chief of the Central Guangzhou Hubei reporter station and others were writing about Wuhan pneumonia (COVID-19, later It is an internal reference for the infection status of COVID-19. The common people in China didn't understand the risk status of the virus until January 20, 2020, when they saw infection expert Zhong Nanshan say on a TV program that the virus could be transmitted from person to person. Three days later, the city of Wuhan was closed, but the high-level officials were planning to evaluate it as early as mid-to-early January. Ordinary people who can't see the internal reference and get sick can only consider themselves unlucky.

If even the internal reference no longer tells the truth, or only picks up words to cater to the power, it will make people think of Mao Zedong in 1957 and 1958 when he was determined to be a people's commune. After the People's Daily was criticized by Mao Zedong, the tendency of internal reference also began to self-adjust. It reported on the People's Commune from a positive perspective, although some officials were very reserved and even opposed it at the time, and the peasants were not without resistance.

We all know what happened later, eating big pots of rice, plus the main labor force in the countryside joined the whole people in steelmaking and water conservancy repairs, and the local politicians flattered Mao Zedong and kept raising the quota for food delivery, which eventually led to a great tragedy of famine for the whole people. Tens of millions of people, so far the CCP has mentioned this period and still calls it a "three-year natural disaster".

Obviously, Xi Jinping in 2022 will not only rely on party media and internal references as his important source of information in China, where technological surveillance and data are everywhere. However, we are not only talking about the "information" used to make decisions, but also the "emotions" that can be truly empathized. In terms of stimulating empathy, social media is indeed a strong point. However, if Xi Jinping also goes on Weibo and WeChat, will he still be stuck in the stratosphere? END