Tracking People’s Daily — June 29, 2020

Page 1: A few pieces to note:

• Xi Jinping’s message to Kiribati President Taneti Maamau on his electoral victory — a sign of the PRC’s expanding role in the south Pacific.
• Over the past few weeks, there’s been massive flooding across large parts of China. But this never made it to PPD’s front page. Here’s a Page 4 report in today’s edition: “Since June, flood disasters in southern China have caused 12.16 million disasters in 13 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) including Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan, Sichuan, and Jiangxi, 78 deaths and disappearances, and 729,000 emergency transfers; more than 8,000 houses collapsed and 97,000 were damaged to varying degrees; direct economic losses were 25.7 billion yuan.” None of this is front page news. But Xi Jinping’s instructions on flooding has made front page news. Xinhua’s English version carries the same remarks.
• A report on the NPCSC meeting in Beijing. The HK natsec law is being reviewed, along with other laws. Let’s see if there’s a vote by Tuesday.
• A report on a symposium on foreign trade headed by Li Keqiang. This is interesting because it tells you of Beijing’s assessment of the demand side shock that it is experiencing. PPD report says: “The current epidemic situation is still prevalent in the world, the world economy is in serious recession, and my country’s economy has been deeply integrated into the world economy. The foreign trade environment is still grim and complex in the next step, and it must be fully estimated and prepared for.” Xinhua English doesn’t mention this, but talks about the measures discussed. “Li stressed the need to roll out new measures to keep foreign trade and investment stable, especially increasing support to secure small-, medium- and micro-sized firms and labor-intensive companies, while helping major foreign trade enterprises solve problems to better keep employment stable. At the symposium, Li called for improving the implementation of export-tax rebates, guiding financial institutions to strengthen funding support to ease the liquidity difficulties of foreign trade enterprises, tapping the potential of customs clearance facilitation reform and optimizing services for enterprises.”
• Finally, this report, which says that China’s reserve military forces will be brought under the centralized and unified command of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the Central Military Commission starting from July 1. Currently, the reserve forces are under the dual leadership of military organs and local Party committees.

Page 3: A few pieces to note:

• A collection of positive bits of news coverage in the international press to showcase confidence in China’s economic recovery.
• An interview with David Monyae, director of the China Research Center, on China-Africa cooperation. In addition, there’s an ambassador’s essay. This one’s by Zhang Xun, the ambassador to Senegal.

Page 4: A piece on the epidemic in Beijing. PPD says: “The epidemic situation is generally controllable, but it must not be taken lightly.” A total of 7.687 million people have been tested, “basically completing the “exhaustive inspection.’”

Page 9: An interesting piece on building “social sciences with Chinese characteristics.” Here’s what it argues: “Providing ideological and intellectual support for our party’s governance of the country is an important function of our universities and an important mission shouldered by universities’ philosophy and social sciences.” To do this, the piece argues, China must “continuously deepen the research and interpretation of Xi Jinping’s socialist thought with Chinese characteristics in the new era…second tell a good Chinese story and push philosophy and social sciences out.” There’s this quote of Xi Jinping it picks up: “In interpreting Chinese practice and constructing Chinese theory, we should have the most say, but in fact, China’s philosophy and social sciences have a relatively low voice in the world, and they are still in a reasonable and unspeakable way.” The third thing to do is “to give full play to the advantages of college philosophy and social sciences in educating people…we must give full play to the ideological and value guiding roles of philosophy and social sciences. Through channels such as classroom teaching and academic research, we will promote the implementation of ideological and political work and achieve results.”

Page 16: The lead international story is about the ASEAN summit that ended recently. Once again, there’s incredible selective reportage. So the piece covers issues of economic cooperation, the talk about working together to maintain industrial supply chains and solidarity in tackling Covid. But there’s no mention of the South China Sea or UNCLOS. Here’s ASEAN’s statement.