In August 2018, at the annual Conference on Propaganda and Ideological Work, Xi Jinping declared that the CCP needs to ensure that “the party’s innovative theories fly into the homes of ordinary people.”2 Compared to the administration under Hu Jintao und Wen Jiabao, the CCP under Xi has shown a much greater concern with ensuring that everyone from high-ranking cadres to ordinary citizens fully support the CCP’s ideology.

In 2016, in order to understand whether and to what extent this is reflected in the actual spectrum of opinions, MERICS conducted a study of competing ideas and ideologies in China. The authors found a surprising plurality of opinions in Chinese online debates.3 This finding stands in stark contrast with the ambitions of the CCP to create a national ideology to unify China’s population and to legitimize its continued rule.

Since the publication of the study in early 2017, the CCP has tightened its grip on power even further, with Xi Jinping famously declaring at the 19th Party Congress that “the party rules over everything.”4 At the National People’s Congress (NPC) in March 2018, the party made it clear that it demands absolute loyalty towards the party and Xi.

Just like the 19th Party Congress in the fall of 2017, the NPC was first and foremost a show of party and government standing united behind the General Secretary. The Congress removed the presidential term limits and enshrined Xi Jinping’s contributions to party ideology in the Party Constitution and the Chinese Constitution under the long and unwieldy label of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era.”

Even though Xi’s diminished presence in party-state media starting in July 2018 prompted brief speculation that his position inside the CCP may have weakened, other signs point towards reinforced attempts to present Xi as a leader of “historical importance.” Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Reform and Opening Period, the Shekou Museum of Reform and Opening in Shenzhen replaced a relief depicting Deng Xiaoping on his famous 1992 Southern Tour with a quote by Xi Jinping.5

Regardless of Xi’s precise status inside the top leadership, the party’s demands for loyalty from all Chinese citizens continue. Arguing that strong party leadership is a pre-requisite for China to succeed, the CCP has begun strengthening its control over all areas of life.

A thorough restructuring of the State Council unveiled at the NPC has boosted the party’s control over areas previously managed by the state. The CCP has also reinforced its efforts to combat cynicism towards official ideology within the party and key groups within the population.

It is reasonable to assume that the claim to control everything has had consequences for what can and cannot be said online.

Legislative changes certainly suggest tighter control. Earlier cyberspace legislation primarily focused on the enforcement of real-name registration and banning “illegal content.”6 In 2017, the Chinese government started to reach into more channels of communication, closing in on more hidden spaces for pluralistic exchange of information and opinion.7 Targeting public discussion forums, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued stipulations in August and September requiring forum operators to establish mechanisms linking accounts to proper identification as well as a system to review all posts before publication. Also, chat group providers as well as administrators of private groups will be held liable for the content of discussions and required to store user data for six months and to apply a credit scoring system.8

Our goal for this publication was to understand what is left of pluralistic debates on Chinese social media in the “new era.” We analyzed two recent debates on issues of key importance to the Xi administration’s effort to establish China as a responsible, influential global power. The first debate revolved around an international crisis triggered by a series of North Korean missile tests in the summer of 2017. The second reacted to the first international summit of the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)” hosted by China in Beijing in May 2017. We started by identifying the party-state line on those two topics by crawling articles from party-state media during the same time frame. We then used the official positions as a benchmark to identify the degree of divergence in online debates.9

We analyzed the data with regard to three questions: