Looking back, I think it’s kind of fate that the first week I entered into the biggest media group in my city, I read Carrie Gracie’s report on Xi’s power grabbing game with Bo Xilai in 2017. It’s a really long article, called « The murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel ». It was quite fascinating while I was reading, as a post graduate student majored in English Literature who entered her journalist dream as an intern working for an bilingual magazine. I just earned what I wanted. But that afternoon, when I finished reading that report, my dream as journalist collapsed. I don’t blame it because later that week when I attended a meeting in replace of my editor in chief who was up for other work, my dream was totally erased as I was seeing, listening, and taking notes sitting beside the Chief of the News Agency of the whole media group. The scene was like, outside, I composed very well, expression controlled, a master of fake, like a young innocent straight-A student new comer, inside I was like, « what the fuck » shock and correcting, protesting over the 2 hours meeting. My whole world-view was bit of shattered after the meeting, but I kept composed my self and reported everything I noted on the conference to the editor-in-chief. After the reporting, the editor told me « You know what you’ve heard is quite sensitive, right? It’s not supposed to tell outsiders » I responded naturally « Yes, of course, I understand » Then I was dismissed. That was my first week working in China’s media group. Btw, it’s a shame for BBC to lose Carrie Gracie, and shame on BBC who’s not giving equal payment. You British are really messing up yourself hard.

As a former media worker, I know the red line very well, hereby the red line means some subject or topic on reporting , if you touch it in China, you’d be in warning, in detain, in jail, or disappear. Being a true journalist in China is life-threatening, that’s why there’s no investigative journalist in China, because your life is not your own, your parents, you friends all count on you. For the current journalist situation, I can only tell you that those you see look like journalists are sort of permitted to be so. Permitted by Who? The family of Zhao.

The family of Zhao is the phrase that Chinese people made to indicate the several ruling communist families in China, in which Xi Jinping is included. If you search it on Github, yeah, the website for programmers sharing codes, you can find the name list of the family of Zhao. Yeah, one of Chinese programmers who really has the balls did that.

The family of Zhao is originated from a short novel written by a famous Chinese writer in 1920s called LuXun. Within the story, Mr. Zhao was an obnoxious and arrogant landlord who reprimanded a peasant who claimed himself also named Zhao, saying « You don’t deserve to be the family of Zhao » Thus at a time those Chinese who defended communist party got backfired by commentators on the social media with the same script like « yo man wake up, you don’t deserve to be the family of Zhao »

See, Chinese people are not stupid. We have a plan B, plan B to look for who’s going to be taken account when things need to be cleared. The fear is gradually crawling back to the one who spread it. So how much do Chinese know about Xi? I’d say he’s quite typical middle-aged Chinese man with low self-esteem and full of wrong ideas because of his poor experience in teenage. I draw my conclusion first from the recording of his speech you’re going to hear, and I’ll explain later