Page 1: Let’s begin with a story about the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, which is being upgraded. It’s fascinating to me how the story blended Xi Jinping’s folksy appeal into the narrative. The story begins with Li Heng, a post-90s generation citizen, who along with 19 others had written a letter to…

Page 1: A couple of stories to note. First, the phone call between Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron (Xinhua English version). In the English story, Xinhua reports that the two leaders reached an “important consensus.” Tricky to summarise this, so here’s the text: “Calling ‘independence, mutual understanding, foresight…

Page 1: A couple of key pieces to note. First, a long piece about Xi Jinping’s personal leadership of China’s economic and social development through the period of the 13th FYP. Here’s a sample: “Since the 13th Five-Year Plan, in the face of the complicated international situation and the arduous…

Page 1: A couple of key stories to note on the page. First, let’s look at trade data. I am going to highlight the data from Xinhua English and People’s Daily. China’s “foreign trade expanded 7.8 percent year on year last month, with exports jumping 14.9 percent year on year…

Pages 1 & 2: A couple of reports to note on both pages. On the first page, there was a piece about the regional development strategy. If you’ve not been following, there’s been a focus in China to carry out coordinated development of large clusters. This piece talks about the…

Page 1: The big story on the front page is about the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen SEZ, with Xi’s speech being the highlight. Along with the speech, do note that Xi and other leaders honoured Deng Xiaoping, laying flowers at his statue. In PD, there’s a picture of Xi…

Page 1: A fair amount to note on the front page today. First, there’s a new set of regulations for the work of the Central Committee. This is significant, in that these rules will govern Central Committee functioning and bestow certain powers on the General Secretary. I’ll highlight a couple…

Page 1: Two pieces based on Xi’s speech at the Party School. I covered this in my weekly newsletter. The first is a report, which has different officials reacting to the speech. The next one is a commentary, which says: “We are in a promising new era. …

We’re still in holiday mode, so the paper’s a smaller edition. On the front page, there’s this story about consumption having become the driving force for the Chinese economy. It says that “last year, the contribution rate of consumption to economic growth was 57.8%…Last year, the Engel’s coefficient of Chinese…