By Qian Gang | Posted on 2014-11-06<\/p>\n
The recent 4th Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party introduced a policy document with the long-winded title, Decision on Major Issues Concerning the Comprehensive Promotion of Rule of the Nation in Accord with the Law (\u5173\u65bc\u5168\u9762\u63a8\u8fdb\u4f9d\u6cd5\u6cbb\u56fd\u82e5\u5e72\u95ee\u9898\u7684\u51b3\u5b9a). One key takeaway of the \u201cDecision\u201d is the return of a pair of phrases that for some period of time had disappeared from official media coverage in China \u2014 \u201cruling the nation in accord with the constitution\u201d (\u4f9d\u5baa\u6cbb\u56fd) and \u201cgoverning in accord with the constitution\u201d (\u4f9d\u5baa\u6267\u653f).<\/p>\n
For some background on these terms, readers can turn to two pieces I posted back in September, \u201cThe Missing Speech\u201d and \u201cXi\u2019s Missing Terms Emerge Again.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"red-alert1\"](\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/11\/red-alert1-300x158.png\")
\n[ABOVE: Introduced boldly early in Xi Jinping’s term in office, the idea of “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” has peaked, fallen and reemerged over the past two years. “Red Alert,” photo by Michel Filion available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]<\/p>\n
On December 4, 2012, Xi Jinping made a speech in Beijing to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the promulgation and implementation of China\u2019s constitution. This speech attracted a great deal of attention both inside and outside China. In the speech, Xi Jinping said: \u201cRule of the nation by law means, first and foremost, ruling the nation in accord with the constitution; the crux in governing by laws is to govern in accord with the constitution\u201d (\u4f9d\u6cd5\u6cbb\u56fd\u9996\u5148\u662f\u4f9d\u5baa\u6cbb\u56fd\uff0c\u4f9d\u6cd5\u6267\u653f\u5173\u952e\u662f\u4f9d\u5baa\u6267\u653f).<\/p>\n
For Xi Jinping to use the words \u201cfirst and foremost\u201d and \u201ccrux\u201d in these remarks represented a marked departure from the language of his predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.<\/p>\n
But in 2013, in the midst of the \u201cSeven Don\u2019t Speaks\u201d (\u4e03\u4e0d\u8bb2) policy and a wave of anti-constitutionalism rhetoric, this pair of Xi Jinping terms disappeared from official discourse altogether. They even became, we could say, sensitive terms.<\/p>\n
As I wrote in \u201cThe Missing Speech,\u201d when the Central Propaganda Department published a book last summer called A Primer of Important Speeches by General Secretary Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping\u2019s December 2012 speech on constitutionalism was unaccountably left out of the collection.<\/p>\n
Finally, on September 5, 2013, in a speech to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the National People\u2019s Congress, President Xi again used his two-part phrase: \u201cRule of the nation by law means, first and foremost, ruling the nation in accord with the constitution,\u201d he said. \u201cThe crux in governing by laws is to govern in accord with the constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Xi\u2019s speech was reported in the official People\u2019s Daily, the six-month disappearance of this political phrase was finally ended. However, the phrase went silent again immediately after the People\u2019s Daily report, resurfacing only after the \u201ccommunique\u201d (\u516c\u62a5) for the 4th Plenum was released in late October.<\/p>\n
Searching for the pair of terms between December 2012 and October 2014 in three separate databases \u2014 the People\u2019s Daily (PD coverage alone, full text); WiseNews (100+ mainland papers, full text and headline search); Baidu.com (covering all mainland news sites) \u2014 I arrived at the following results, which show a clear pattern across all three databases. The bottom two graphs are both for WiseNews, the headline search on the left and the full text search on the right. By Qian Gang | Posted on 2014-11-06 The … Continue reading
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