Zhang Zhulin is a journalist
who has worked at Courrier International
for fifteen years .
He is the author of
La Société de surveillance made in China
(Éditions de l'Aube, 2023).
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“All of China is overflowing with optimism
. ”
This article from the
People's Daily
, published on February 2, a few days before the Lunar New Year, was widely relayed on social networks.
This enthusiasm of Chinese Internet users is not to promote this positive climate called for by the organ of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but to find out who is the author of this “joke”, because the Middle Kingdom is in bad shape. pass.
In reality, it is a long sentence of praise for Chinese power from Renate Koppe, secretary for international relations of the German Communist Party (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, DKP), quoted by the
People's Daily
.
As if to ensure the credibility of these praising remarks, the
People's Daily
pointed out that the German communist, Renate Koppe, "immersed herself" in the activity centers of CCP members, having "visited" several Party schools, having taken note of university courses in Marxism, and even having traveled to rural areas of Anhui province (eastern province of the country) to study local development.
This, before concluding
“all of China is overflowing with optimism”
.
Many Chinese Internet users since then have only one idea in mind: to know who this Renate Koppe is!
The praise of this person “more organ of the CCP than the organ of the CCP” (more royalist than the king), aroused the curiosity of the Chinese.
The next day, a blogger specializing in daily life in Germany published an educational article to respond to this sudden need of his compatriots, seeing
“a number of people on WeChat relaying this extravagant article [from the
People's Daily
]”
.
The article notes that the DKP, party of Renate Koppe, obtained a total of 15,150 “valuable” votes in the 2021 federal elections, with 2,850 members within the Party, and an average age of over 60 years.
Without hiding his mockery, the blogger resumes the presentation of the DKP, revealing that the website of the Party magazine,
Unsere Zeit
(“our time”), “is not accessible” in China.
And if the Chinese blogger specifies that Renate Koppe did publish two articles last July concerning her visit to China in
Unsere Zeit
, he did not find the famous sentence taken up by the
People's Daily there
.
Apart from Renate Koppe or a few loyalists in the official media, few Chinese see that the country is brimming with optimism, or who rejoice in the prosperity, especially at the moment.
Zhang Zhulin
The audience lives up to Renate Koppe's powerful sentence.
The article recorded a visibility of 100,000 "reads" on WeChat (the Chinese social network does not communicate the number of "reads" from this threshold): a peak for this blog, for which, in general, the number of “read” ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand.
But apart from Renate Koppe or a few loyalists in the official media, few Chinese see that the country is overflowing with optimism, or who rejoice in the prosperity, particularly at the moment.
But if we go into the analysis, the much-awaited “consumption catch-up” is not there.
Worse, it was replaced by a wave of corporate defections, dubbed by Chinese Internet users as
“bankruptcy catch-ups”
.
The bloodless real estate industry is epitomized by the liquidation of the empire of the Evergrande group, one of the largest developers in the Middle Kingdom.
The weight of its debts - more than 300 billion dollars - was enough to shake up the sector.
The youth unemployment rate has continued to break records, so much so that the National Bureau of Statistics felt obliged to change its method of calculation.
Foreign investment in China has fallen to its lowest level in thirty years.
In metropolises like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Wuhan, the country's economic powerhouses, the office vacancy rate has exceeded the 20% threshold.
That of Shenzhen even reached 26%: unheard of in a decade.
Employees in different sectors, large companies in tech, education, finance, or administration, have seen their salaries drop.
So much so that the Singaporean newspaper
Lianhe Zaobao
exclaimed: “another wave of salary cuts in China?”
As for many small Chinese shareholders, stunned by the continued fall of the Chinese stock market, they even rushed to the Weibo account of the American embassy in China, taking it as a “Wailing Wall” by pouring in a few hundred thousand of desperate comments, before being deleted, such as “please save the shareholders!
These people are incapable of governing.”
When the Chinese country and people were being pushed into hell, the
People's Daily
sang the beautiful mirage with all its might.
Zhang Zhulin
Faced with this disappointing and unprecedented economic situation in recent decades, Chinese people are realizing that the country's leading daily newspaper has remained faithful to its propaganda method, by misinforming the people.
On Saturday, February 3, another article on WeChat, entitled “in 1960, the people's communes provided the entire country with an atmosphere of rapid development,” was less fortunate.
The article was quickly censored.
However, this is a resumption of a real article published on January 27, 1960 in the
People's Daily
.
The blogger just changed the title.
In this article,
"with brilliant brilliance, demonstrating a great future, the people's communes promote the rapid development of the national economy"
, the
People's Daily
did not hesitate to flood the people with good news, listing the merits of the popular communes.
Thanks to the latter, according to the PCC organ, not only
"agricultural production continued to make a leap forward"
, but the forestry industry, livestock breeding, secondary industries and fishing, "
also experienced the prosperity"
.
The article depicts agricultural and secondary products
"harvested in large quantities"
, praising
"an exceptional situation never seen before"
before "communization".
However, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.
From 1958 to 1961, the Great Leap Forward campaign led by Mao Zedong ended in the great famine which left between 20 and 30 million dead in the Chinese countryside.
When the country and the people were pushed into hell, the
People's Daily
sang of the beautiful mirage with all its might.
Sixty-four years after the publication of this article, which the CCP organ itself wanted to conceal, Chinese black humor was awakened by the
“sincere observations”
of a member of the German Communist Party.
“I was a little lost when I heard this, not knowing how boasting could develop the economy
,” wrote a Chinese, continuing with humor, that he had
“thought that since there is no room for optimism in the world, the more boasters there are, the more the atmosphere overflows
.
Obviously, this article, also published on WeChat and undoubtedly not corresponding to this atmosphere overflowing with optimism praised by Renate Koppe, disappeared immediately.