What is it about the number 19? Back in 2013, Xi Jinping delivered his first major speech on ideology, in which he spoke in hardline terms about a “public opinion struggle,” on August 19. This year, on February 19, Xi Jinping visited state media before delivering an “important speech” on “news and public opinion work,” in which he said that media “must be surnamed Party” and do the Party’s bidding. On April 19, Xi Jinping let loose on the now central issue of cybersecurity, outlining strengthened internet controls and saying that a “clear and bright online space, ecologically sound, is in the interests of the people.”

Is Xi Jinping obsessed with the number “19”? All three of his “important speeches” on media and information policy have been held on the 19th of the month. The character for “9” is a homonym in Chinese of the word for “long-lasting,” seen above.

The character for “9” in Chinese is a homonym of “long-lasting” (久), and as a result tie-ups, such as contracts (or marriages), are often formalised on the 9th, 19th or 29th of the month — an auspicious sign of sustained harmony.

Is it that Xi Jinping pines for an eternal spring of ideological dominance? Does he envision an enduring Eden of the mobile internet, a garden “ruled by law,” where forms and content effloresce but no-one dares touch the forbidden fruit of knowledge?

For now, readers may file these questions away in “Arcana of the Xi Jinping Era.”

But we have another 19 of sorts. Yesterday, June 19, a lengthy article by Tian Jin (田进), deputy director of China’s State Administration of Press and Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), appeared on page five of the People’s Daily as part of a series on the “study and implementation” of Xi Jinping’s February 19 speech on the media.

Tian’s article is of course not a Xi Jinping speech. But it is remarkable for the harder edge it gives to Xi’s already hard language on the media — and it is a very concerning indication of the depth of official resolve in tightening, expanding and re-envisioning information controls.

But first off, who is Tian Jin?

Tian, a native of Shanxi who was educated at Hunan University, has spent the past 15 years within the media control bureaucracy, first joining the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) in 2001. Before that, he spent almost two years in Hong Kong as a senior administrative affairs official at Xinhua News Agency.

The 2015 television period drama “The Empress of China.” Just too much cleavage for SAPPRFT official Tian Jin?

It was Tian who fielded questions from reporters in January 2015 following news that the authorities had pulled the popular television series “Empress of China” to make additional cuts. Later that year, addressing a television market event in Shenzhen, Tian praised the industry for “the resounding main theme [of the Party] in their productions, and more robustly positive energy.”

Tian Jin began his People’s Daily article — “Grasping the Important Position of News and Public Opinion Work” — by describing the significance, in the grandest terms, of Xi Jinping’s February 19 address on media policy. The speech, said Tian, provided “the fundamental standard in doing news and public opinion work at this new historical starting point, and offered powerful ideological weaponry in meeting the challenges on the new front lines of news and public opinion, under the new situation, and in breaking through difficulties.”

In CCP jargon, this is more or less secret code for: Unless we get a handle on the mobile-based internet and any other disruptive information technologies that might be coming down the pipeline, the Party will lose its grip on political power. And President Xi has handed us the general blueprint for total information dominance.

All of this is blandly familiar. But what really makes Tian Jin’s piece special is the way he remorselessly employs retrograde language to explain the Party’s priorities and their historical context:

News and public opinion work is an important task for the Party. Comrade Mao Zedong said that revolution relies on the barrel of the gun and the shaft of the pen, and that the Chinese Communist Party must hold pamphlets in its left hand and bullets in its right before it can defeat the enemy. Prioritising news and public opinion work is a fine tradition of our Party, and an important magic weapon that has brought constant victories in revolution, [national] construction and reform. Under the conditions of a new era, the cause of the Party faces an even more arduous and onerous task.

Such talk of guns and pens, of enemies and magic weapons, is the kind of hardline nostalgia we would expect to see on leftist forums in China. We generally would not expect to see such talk in the People’s Daily. In fact, the phrase “barrel of the gun and shaft of the pen” (枪杆子和笔杆子) has appeared just 17 times in the entire history of the newspaper, going all the way back to July 2, 1946. It has appeared in three articles in the Xi Jinping era, after a dormancy of almost 30 years:

Tian Jin’s piece on news and public opinion work — June 19, 2016 A profile of Ai Siqi, encouraging officials to be theory-minded and study up on their Marxism — August 13, 2015 A look back on Mao Zedong’s writings — February 28, 2013

Before these more recent instances, we have to go back almost 30 years to November 15, 1983, to find the last use of the phrase. In the five and a half years from May 18, 1978, to November 15, 1983, there were four pieces in the People’s Daily mentioning the phrase “barrel of the gun and shaft of the pen” — three of them in the context of roundly criticising the Gang of Four and the internal political strife of the pre-reform period.

“These counter-revolutionary activities strongly demonstrate intense collusion between counter-revolutionary gun barrels and pen shafts, banding together as traitors.” — May 18, 1978 [Mention on a list of books under investigation in Taiwan of a book called, Gun Barrels and Pen Shafts of the KMT.] — November 26, 1982 “Lin Biao understood that to engage in counter-revolutionary activities, he had to rely on the ‘two staves,’ namely the barrel of the gun and the shaft of the pen.” — January 31, 1983 “First of all, the reactionary rulers grabbed control of the seals [government power], the handcuffs [police power], the guns [military] and the pens [intellectuals], seeking to snuff out and suppress every spark of the revolution.” — November 15, 1983

When we go back beyond these four mentions in the early reform period, we have ten articles remaining, all of them published during the Cultural Revolution.