Will the Real China Please Stand Up
Local media treatment of Wen Jiabao’s eulogy to his late mother exposes the paradox of the country’s identity under Xi Jinping.
“Uncle Wen” has arrived.
Photographer: The Asahi Shimbun
Chinese President Xi Jinping used his speech at the country’s equivalent of the World Economic Forum on Tuesday to lay out his vision for a multipolar world, inveighing against bossy behavior and advocating the common values of “peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom.” At the same time, officials at home were restricting a former premier’s own entreaty for justice and freedom in China.
Wen Jiabao’s call was contained in a 6,500-character eulogy to his late mother, which was published in the little-known Macau Herald before being picked up and shared hundreds of thousands of times on Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat social media platform. The essay is overwhelmingly personal and appears, for the most part, politically uncontroversial until a short passage near the end, where the 78-year-old former premier writes: