New state propaganda efforts to promote Xi Jinping continue to emerge ahead of the 20th Party Congress in late 2022, at which Xi is expected to assume a historic third term as CCP general secretary.
CCP news agency Xinhua’s new online video-clip series, Learning and Reviewing Xi, is aimed at Chinese youth and has been promoted on its social media accounts and on the video-sharing platforms Douyin (China’s version of TikTok), WeChat Video, and Kuaishou. Xinhua claimed the 30 short episodes, featuring clips of Xi’s speeches and other footage of the CCP leader, had been viewed 550 million times by January 2022.
A late January report from ChinaFile found that since 2018, the CCP had established tens of thousands “New Era Civilization Practice Centers” across the country to promote so-called Xi Jinping Thought, and that over 2,000 had been built in Xinjiang by November 2021. In another move likely related to information controls around the Party Congress, since mid-February analysts noticed that Baidu search engine’s translation platform stopped translating Xi Jinping’s name in Chinese into other languages, and instead shows asterisks.
Some analysts believe it is part of a filtering system for “sensitive” words, which companies are likely expanding ahead of the Party Congress.
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