Chairman of everything

SHORTLY before the annual session in March of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, two curious articles appeared in government-linked news media. The first, published in a newspaper run by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party’s anti-graft body, was called “The fawning assent of a thousand people cannot match the honest advice of one”. It was written in an allegorical style traditionally used in China to criticise those in power, in this case in the form of an essay praising the seventh-century emperor, Taizong, for heeding a plain-talking courtier. The article called for more debate and freer speech at a time when China’s president, Xi Jinping, has been restricting both. “The ability to air opinions freely often determined the rise and fall of dynasties,” it said. “We should not be afraid of people saying the wrong things; we should be afraid of people not speaking at all.”