Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu (李家超) sent a letter to all civil servants on October 28 urging them to vote in the December 7 Legislative Council election, calling it “a concrete way to demonstrate their oath to uphold the Basic Law.” The pro-governmentTa Kung Pao (大公報), controlled by the Liaison Office, responded with an editorial stating civil servant votes should be “iron votes” (鐵票) — unwavering support for the new electoral system. The case illustrated how civil servants face mounting pressure, including in state-backed media, to demonstrate political loyalty through voting.
The 2025 Hong Kong Legislative Council election will be held on December 7. IMAGE: InMediaHK.
On many or even most days, the front page of the People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放軍報), the flagship newspaper of China’s top military leadership body, the Central Military Commission (CMC), is a mirror of the Party’s People’s Daily. But on Monday this week one of the most prominent pieces was an oddly unique report about — would you believe it? — how “proper writing wins battles.”
No, this was not an argument about information warfare (which the PLA pursues actively), and certainly not about how the pen is mightier than the sword. This was a message from the PLA leadership about the need to cut down on bureaucratic jargon, lest it have real consequences on the battlefield. What we can glean from this cautionary article is that official verbosity — a byproduct of China’s highly politicized military and leadership apparatus — is a genuine concern within the upper ranks.
The commentary promotes improved “writing styles and speaking styles” (文风话风) within the military, and argues that clear, concise communication directly impacts military effectiveness. To support its case, the piece claims that Communist military orders during the Civil War were terse compared to verbose Nationalist communications. While noting the problem as a general concern, the piece praises certain PLA units for adopting “concise, practical and new” (短实新) directives, with one unit limiting command documents to a single page and cutting message processing time by 50 percent. These examples demonstrate, the piece argues, that “proper writing and speaking styles can win battles” (好的文风好话风能够打胜仗).
The piece traces a direct lineage from Mao Zedong’s 1942 “Oppose Party Formalism” (反对党八股) speech in Yan’an — which attacked bureaucratic jargon using folksy language — to Xi Jinping’s 2012 “Eight-Point Regulation” (八项规定) that sought to curb official rhetoric. But this may be a losing battle. After all, specialized political jargon, which gives rise to verbosity and ritualistic repetition, is hardwired into the system.
“The style of our writing is the style of our troops; the efficiency of our language is the efficiency of our combat. The battlefield has no room for niceties and nonsense — a few wasted words, a single wasted minute, could mean more bloodshed and sacrifice.”
Speculation about Xi Jinping’s waning influence intensified late last month following news of his planned absence from this week’s BRICS summit in Rio, on top of reports suggesting his presence in China’s state-run media has declined. Willy Wo-Lap Lam at the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief noted that “citations of Xi’s name have become thinner and thinner in authoritative official media,” raising questions about potential leadership changes as China approaches its next Party congress.
However, our analysis of front-page headlines in the Party’s official People’s Daily challenges this narrative. Comparing the second quarters of 2024 and 2025, we found that Xi appeared in headlines 177 times versus 157 times respectively — a modest decline likely explained by incomplete June 2025 data. More significantly, Premier Li Qiang, Xi’s closest competitor, showed virtually no change with 45 appearances in 2024 and 43 in 2025.
While these headline counts cannot capture insider dynamics or leadership effectiveness, they hardly suggest a power shift in the Party’s most important publication. Xi’s dominance in China’s authoritative media remains intact — contradicting speculation about his declining grip on power. The data suggests China’s most powerful leader in generations continues to command overwhelming media attention. Read more on this at the China Media Project website.
