Talking In Slogans: Elite Contention in Communist Public Media

• In Event: Party Politics and Promotion in China: Privilege, Merit, Loyalty and Gender

Abstract

Propaganda in China has always been viewed as concerted efforts by the elites to project an unanimous image to the general public for the purpose of indoctrination, legitimation and control. This paper explores its role in intra-elite communication and show how the language of propaganda--especially propaganda slogans--provide a repertoire of terminology through which ruling elites reveal their political standing in public without looking divided. Top leaders signal their intentions by inventing new slogans in their public speeches, and these signals are keenly observed by the lower-level officials who then respond strategically through subtle manipulations of the timing and frequency of these slogans' appearances in the provincial party newspapers under their control. In a country where elite support cannot be measured accurately through elections, vocal support of the top leader's campaign slogans becomes the only way elites estimate each others' preferences. I divide officials' response strategies into three types: "cheerleaders" who attempt to echo the slogans earlier than everyone else even when the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of campaigns is still high; "conformists" who only echo when enough others have already done so; and "laggards" who refrain from voicing support as a subtle form of noncompliance. To quantify these responses, I first developed a computational method to extract a list of propaganda slogans invented by Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping from their speeches from November 2002 to December 2018 and then searched for their appearances in the first page of provincial party newspapers. I then explored how provincial officials' factional connections to the top leader and to his potential opponents at the center shape their response strategies, and how political incentives change depending on the strength of the top leader. I also explore the effects of political vulnerability (i.e. having former patrons or clients who recently fell in the anti-corruption campaigns) on the officials' public discourses. This paper reveals how even in a regime like China where open elite contention is considered strictly taboo, politicians still manage to use public discourses as political instruments and how careful analyses of communist media reveal underlying elite contention.

Author

• Yin Yuan