Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, discusses the tedium of official speeches in China. Ms. Lu is a research fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute and an associate fellow at the U.K.-based Chatham House. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

    Yiyi Lu

    Anyone who has heard official speeches in China would know what it means to be “bored to distraction.” Anyone who has heard visiting Chinese officials in foreign countries would probably know the meaning of the phrase even better, as Chinese speeches often sound longer and make even less sense when translated into foreign languages.

    Every now and then, a Party document or an article in the People’s Daily would urge a change to the bad “literary style” that characterizes official speeches and writings. Most recently, Politburo member and President of the Central Communist Party School Xi Jinping launched a fresh attack on unhealthy literary styles at the School’s spring 2010 opening ceremony.


    Xi says many official documents and speeches are “long, empty and false.” Quoting Mao, he says literary style reflects the Party’s work style. The Party’s past experience shows that unhealthy literary styles can cause great harm, including lowering the Party’s prestige, alienating the public, and causing the Party’s policies to lose appeal.

    Xi also lists several reasons for unhealthy literary styles:

    • Some officials lack knowledge, experience and skill, so they are unable to say anything useful and new.
    • Some officials are lazy. They do not engage in first-hand investigations and independent thinking, so they are only able to copy existing documents.
    • Some officials think they can only show they have kept in step with the Party Centre by copying official documents and newspapers.
    • Some officials think long speeches show they attach importance to the work. The longer the speech they deliver to a particular department, the more it shows they value that department’s work.
    • Some officials are irresponsible. They would read the speeches written for them by others. No matter how long the speeches are, they just read them all.
    • Some officials think empty words, clichés and flatteries are the safest, as they can’t make mistakes with them.

    Interestingly, Xi cites efforts from Mao, Deng Xiaoping, up to the current leader Hu Jintao to improve the Party’s writing and speech styles. Such efforts date back to the Party’s Yan’an era in the 1940s. Apparently, in 60 years, the Party has not managed to solve the problem of “unhealthy literary styles.” Will Xi Jinping’s latest speech make a difference? Don’t bet on it. (Xi’s own speech urging brevity runs to almost 5,000 characters).

    It seems that simply talking about the importance of good styles and urging officials to discard bad ones has not been effective. After all, there is no real pressure to adopt better styles. No official has ever lost his job because his speeches are too long and devoid of substance. On the other hand, as Xi’s analysis suggests, there are plenty of reasons for officials to perpetuate the bad styles, ranging from incompetence, laziness and the desire to play it safe.

    If the Party really wants to change its deeply-entrenched bureaucratic writing and speech styles, there is one easy way: make officials face the media on a regularly basis.

    When officials must explain their policies and decisions in media interviews lasting only several minutes, when they must offer quick responses to emergencies without relying on pre-prepared scripts, when they must answer the media’s questions about the performance of themselves and their departments, they will quickly learn to speak and write the way normal people do.

    If, on the other hand, officials can continue to hide behind “mountains of documents and seas of meetings” and never have to speak directly to the public, then “unhealthy literary styles” may well have another 60 years of life.


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