Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in China for a two-day state visit, as the two countries look to further deepen a relationship that has grown closer since Moscow invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.
The visit comes days after Russia launched a new offensive in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, and as it claims advances on the 1,000km (600-mile) long front line where Kyiv’s forces have been hampered by delayed deliveries of weapons and ammunitions from the United States.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a “no limits” partnership between Russia and China days before Putin sent his troops into Ukraine in February 2022. In March 2023, when Xi visited Moscow, he described a “new era” in the countries’ relationship while in October, when Putin was last in Beijing, Xi spoke of the “deep friendship” between the two leaders who had met 42 times over the previous decade.
China’s state news agency Xinhua confirmed Putin’s arrival for what Chinese media have described as a state visit from an “old friend”.
Ahead of the trip, 71-year-old Putin said his choice of China as his first foreign destination since being sworn in as president for a fifth term underlined the “unprecedentedly high level of the strategic partnership” between the two countries as well as his close friendship with Xi, who is 70.
“We will try to establish closer cooperation in the field of industry and high technology, space and peaceful nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, renewable energy sources and other innovative sectors,” Putin told China’s Xinhua state news agency.
The two leaders will take part in a gala evening celebrating 75 years since the Soviet Union recognised the People’s Republic of China, which was declared by Mao Zedong following the communists’ victory in China’s civil war in 1949.
Putin will also visit Harbin in northeastern China, a city with strong ties to Russia.
In his interview with Xinhua, Putin also appeared to give his backing to a 12-point Ukraine peace plan that Beijing released to a lukewarm reception on the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2023.
He said the proposals could provide the basis for discussions and that Moscow was “open to a dialogue on Ukraine”. He reiterated the long-held Russian position that “negotiations must take into account the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including ours.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said any negotiations must include a restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression, and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Switzerland is convening a peace summit for Ukraine, focusing on Kyiv’s framework, next June. At least 50 delegations have already agreed to attend, but Russia has not been invited.
China claims to be neutral in the conflict but has not condemned Moscow for its invasion of a sovereign country.
Russia ‘useful’ for China
The Kremlin said in a statement that during their talks this week, Putin and Xi Jinping would “have a detailed discussion on the entire range of issues related to the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” and set “new directions for further development of cooperation between Russia and China.”
The two countries have made clear they want to remake the international order in line with their own visions of how the world should be.
Speaking on Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that Moscow and Beijing played a “major balancing role in global affairs”, and that Putin’s visit would “strengthen our joint work”.
Both countries are veto-holding members of the United Nations Security Council, alongside the US, United Kingdom and France.
“We should not underestimate Russia’s ‘usefulness’ as a friend without limits to China and Xi Jinping,” Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, told Al Jazeera in an email. “Russia is a valuable partner in displacing the US and changing the global order to a favourable one for China and Russia alike. Russia also sees Taiwan as an integral part of China, and we have already seen speculation about the war scenario in the Indo-Pacific and whether Russia would step up to help and join China in possible war efforts.”
Moscow has forged increasingly close ties with Beijing, diverting most of its energy exports to China and importing high-tech components for its military industries from Chinese companies amid Western sanctions.
The two countries have also deepened military ties, holding joint war games over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, and organising training for ground forces in each other’s territory.
China has stepped up military activity around self-ruled Taiwan as the island prepares for the May 20 inauguration of William Lai Ching-te, who was elected president in elections in January.
China claims the territory as its own and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve its goal.
United States President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have had their first direct conversation since November, with officials describing their talk as “constructive”.
But details from Tuesday’s phone call hinted at long-running tensions between China and the US, with Xi calling questions of sovereignty in Taiwan a “red line” not to be crossed.
The leaders last spoke on the sidelines of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in California in November, with both sides hailing progress while remaining at loggerheads over issues like Taiwan and technology development.
Speaking to reporters on background on Tuesday, a US official said the call was meant to be more of a “checking in” and was not necessarily meant to achieve any policy breakthroughs.
“The two leaders held a candid and constructive discussion on a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues, including areas of cooperation and areas of difference,” the White House said in a statement following the call.
Xi, meanwhile, told Biden that the two countries should adopt a baseline principle of “no clash, no confrontation” for the year, according to state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV).
“We should prioritise stability, not provoke troubles, not cross lines but maintain the overall stability of China-US relations,” Xi said, according to the broadcaster.
The call precedes several weeks of diplomacy, with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen set to travel to China this week and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to follow in the weeks ahead.
The White House said Xi and Biden addressed a laundry list of subjects, “including counternarcotics cooperation, ongoing military-to-military communication, talks to address AI-related risks and continuing efforts on climate change and people-to-people exchanges”.
“We believe there is no substitute for regular communication at the leader level to effectively manage this complex and often tense bilateral relationship,” said White House National Security Advisor John Kirby in a press briefing on Tuesday.
The talks come after months of heightened tension: The US military, for instance, has highlighted “near-miss” incidents, where ships in the Taiwan Strait nearly collided and fighter jets have come dangerously close to one another, as part of aggressive manoeuvring.
Both the US and China operate in several key areas in the Pacific, including the South China Sea, East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and any collision could lead to an escalation in tensions.
The Biden administration has made countering China’s increasing military and economic “assertiveness” in the region a key pillar of its foreign policy. It has also sought to shore up military alliances while maintaining trade restrictions on Beijing.
Next week, Biden will host Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House. China’s influence in the region is set to be at the top of the agenda.
Beijing has said US limits on advanced technology transfers and the sanctioning of Chinese businesses have put undue strain on China’s economy. Xi told Biden that such measures are “not de-risking but creating risks”, according to CCTV.
The US House of Representatives, for instance, recently took actions against the China-based company ByteDance. Last month, it called for ByteSance to sell its US-based operations within six months, or see its marquee product — the social media app TikTok — banned within the country.
House leaders said the measure was aimed at preventing user information from being passed to the Chinese government, leading to potential threats to national security. Biden has signalled his willingness to sign such a bill.
The House bill has yet to pass the Senate, however. If it were to be signed into law, the bill would likely face legal challenges in the US over free speech concerns.
The White House acknowledged that the question of a TikTok ban was raised in Tuesday’s call.
Another issue looming over the conversation was Taiwan, an island China claims as its own.
On Tuesday, Biden “emphasised the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and the rule of law and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea”, according to the White House.
Taiwan has long been a point of contention between the US and China. The US “acknowledges” the “One China” policy and does not openly support Taiwan’s independence. But while the US does not have formal relations with the Taiwan government, it sells weapons to the island, and Biden himself has pledged to defend it should the territory face a Chinese invasion.
Heightening tensions is the fact that Taiwan held a vote in January, electing Vice President William Lai Ching-te to be its next president. Lai is a longtime supporter of independence for the self-governing island, and he is scheduled to take office on May 20.
In January, China’s Ministry of National Defence said military officials stressed during a meeting with US counterparts in Washington, DC, that Beijing “will never compromise or back down on the Taiwan issue”.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said later that month that “Taiwan independence” posed the biggest risk to relations between the two countries.
Other international conflicts were also brought up in Tuesday’s call. Biden, for instance, raised concerns over China’s “support for Russia’s defence industrial base” amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
Observers have said Beijing appears more willing to lower tensions with Washington as its economy faces a troubling outlook.
In January, a Chinese ultranationalist vlogger – video blogger – came across red circular stickers on the glass doors of a shopping mall in Nanjing featuring the words: “Happy 2024.”
The vlogger claimed that what appeared to be innocent New Year decorations were, in fact, nationalistic Japanese motifs since the red circles resembled the rising red sun in Japan’s national flag.
“This is Nanjing, not Tokyo! Why are you putting up junk like this?” he snarled at a manager at the mall.
Local police subsequently got involved and ordered staff at the mall to take down the decorations and gave the mall’s management an official warning.
“It is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,” 33-year-old noodle shop owner Alice Lu from Shanghai told Al Jazeera.
“If red circles are not allowed then there is no end to the things that must be removed,” Lu said.
Red souvenir plates with images of China’s Mao Zedong (right) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) in Beijing, China in 2017 [Tyrone Siu/Reuters]
Following the standard set by the local police in Nanjing, users on Chinese social media were quick to highlight the absurdity of all the red circular objects that would need to be banned, including the logo of China’s telecommunications giant Huawei, posters of China’s first Communist leader, Mao Zedong, featuring a rising sun in the background, and even traffic lights.
The fiasco drew in China’s state-run CCTV which chastised the vlogger in an article on its Weibo account, calling his actions “detrimental to individuals, companies and society as a whole”.
Shaoyu Yuan, a scholar of Chinese studies at Rutger’s University in the United States, said CCTV’s comments demonstrated an attempt by the Chinese government to maintain state control over the narrative surrounding nationalism.
“They want to ensure that nationalism serves as a unifying force rather than being misused,” Yuan told Al Jazeera.
The logo of the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies is pictured next to a statue on top of a building in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2021 [Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters]
Steering patriotism
Under the rule of Chinese President Xi Jinping, fervent patriotic sentiment has been encouraged among the public for years.
Xi said in June that “love of our country, the feeling of devotion and sense of attachment to our motherland is a duty and responsibility of every Chinese”, and that “the essence of patriotism is loving the country, the Party and socialism all at the same time”.
During Xi’s presidency, that patriotic fervour has been projected outward from China by its “wolf warrior” diplomats, including former foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian who infamously floated the idea that the US military was responsible for the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
Zhao also posted a fabricated image depicting an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan child in 2020, at a time when relations between Australia and China were in free fall.
While the CCP promotes its own version of patriotism, it also moderates nationalistic output at times, too.
Incessant bashing of the US online is a common pastime among active Chinese nationalists. But leading up to a highly anticipated summit between President Xi and US President Joe Biden in November, China’s media and nationalist commentators suddenly dialled down their anti-US rhetoric.
Beijing adjusts the volume on nationalistic rhetoric to serve its interests, according to Yuan, engaging in a balancing act of patriotic sentiment when necessary.
“While nationalism is encouraged as a means of fostering a strong national identity and loyalty, its excesses can lead to extremism and undermine international diplomacy, social harmony and public order,” Yuan said.
Nationalism turns violent
Lu from Shanghai said the Nanjing incident was an example of how the promotion of intense patriotic feelings in China has led to a toxic environment – particularly when it comes to Japan-related topics.
“It is a bit scary actually how anti-Japanese feelings can make some people react in China,” she said.
Chinese modern nationalism directed at Japan is deeply influenced by historical conflicts, most notably the events of the Second Sino-Japanese War during World War II, Yuan said.
“These have left a lasting imprint on the Chinese collective memory, fuelling sentiments of resentment and vigilance towards Japan,” he said.
Anti-Japanese sentiment was on display in 2022 when a known cosplayer was approached by police in Suzhou, a city not far from Shanghai, as she was taking pictures of herself on the street wearing a Japanese kimono. Before being taken away, a police officer was recorded shouting at the woman: “If you came here wearing hanfu (traditional Chinese clothing), I wouldn’t say this, but you are wearing a kimono as a Chinese. You are Chinese!”
A few days after the arrest, CCTV launched a social media topic promoting the wearing of hanfu-style clothing.
A protester holding a banner shouts slogans during an anti-Japan protest over disputed islands called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan, outside the Japanese Ito Yokado shopping mall at Chunxi Road business area in Chengdu in 2010 [Jason Lee/Reuters]
The Suzhou incident pales in comparison, however, to August 2012 when a dispute in the East China Sea over control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, which are administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing, led to large anti-Japanese protests across urban China.
While protests are often swiftly broken up by the Chinese authorities, the anti-Japanese demonstrations in several cities saw no interference, and from there they turned increasingly violent.
In the central Chinese city of Xi’an, a Chinese man in a Japanese car was pulled out of his vehicle and severely beaten, sustaining life-changing injuries.
The government-controlled People’s Daily subsequently said in an editorial that it did not condone the violence, but attempted to explain it as a sign of Chinese people’s patriotism.
By the time police intervened and restored order at the end of September, Japanese shops, companies and restaurants had been vandalised and China-Japan relations were bruised.
Sales representative Simon Wan, 36, remembers the demonstrations in Beijing devolving into riots at that time.
“From our apartment window, we saw people smash my father’s Toyota (a Japanese car brand) which was parked on the street below,” he told Al Jazeera.
“My family and me stayed indoors most of the time those days to avoid trouble. It was quite frightening.”
Wan believes that the government does not want to see a repeat of the anti-Japan riots in 2012.
“So, I think they reacted to the nationalistic vlogger in Nanjing because they wanted to avoid any kind of escalation,” he said.
When ultranationalist fervour leads to property damage or becomes counterproductive to China’s diplomatic goals, it goes too far, according to Yuan, at which point the Chinese authorities will seek to contain it – as in Nanjing.
Making patriotism pay
The vlogger in Nanjing was not just chastised for being too nationalistic, however. He was pilloried for using patriotism to turn a profit from his video blogs.
“Patriotism is not a business,” CCTV stated in its rebuke of the vlogger.
But, patriotism can in fact be a lucrative business for many nationalistic bloggers and vloggers on Chinese social media.
According to Yuan, there are many ways to monetise patriotism for people such as Hu Xijin, a public figure and commentator who has leveraged his nationalistic stance to amass significant followings on social media.
“This business aspect of patriotism involves not only direct profits from social media platforms through advertisements and sponsored content but also endorsements and partnerships with brands that wish to align themselves with patriotic sentiments,” he said.
Chinese social media accounts with more than a million followers can earn their owners a few hundred thousand dollars a year, while nationalistic commentators such as Hu Xijin have tens of millions of followers. But as the vlogger in Nanjing discovered, the attention garnered by nationalistic tropes does not guarantee fame and fortune, and can instead lead to infamy and misfortune.
The logo of Chinese social media app Weibo is seen on a mobile phone in this illustration picture taken on December 7, 2021 [ Florence Lo/Illustration /Reuters]
In 2022, blogger Sima Nan had his social media accounts across Chinese platforms blocked after he engaged in a war of words with China’s tech firm Lenovo during which time it was revealed that he was a homeowner in the US state of California, despite his overt anti-Americanism.
Another nationalist, Kong Qingdong, was banned from Weibo in 2022 for undisclosed reasons. Kong was also temporarily banned in 2012 after he had sparked a public outcry when he referred to Hongkongers as “dogs” and other slurs.
“Navigating the waters of nationalistic content creation in China can be as perilous as it is profitable,” Yuan said.
“While the Chinese government often supports and promotes nationalistic sentiment that aligns with its policies and image, there are red lines that cannot be crossed, and content creators who venture too far, misinterpret the government’s stance or criticise its policies – even under the guise of nationalism – can find themselves facing swift repercussions,” he said.
Adding to the peril, China’s red lines are fluid and can quickly change depending on the situation.
The sudden shift in nationalistic rhetoric leading up to the Biden-Xi summit in November is an example of such a rapid change.
“A nationalistic stance that aligns with the government’s current diplomatic posture might be encouraged at one time but could become problematic if diplomatic priorities shift and the stance is no longer deemed appropriate,” Yuan explained.
Such fluidity is an element of the CCP’s balancing act regarding nationalism.
“It (the CCP) aims to promote a strong sense of national identity and pride among its citizens while avoiding the pitfalls of hypernationalism that could lead to xenophobia, regional tensions, or internal dissent,” Yuan added.
“Additionally, the Chinese government has always sought to prevent any single voice or group from becoming so influential in nationalist discourse that it could challenge the authority of the Communist Party or create factions within society.”
Looking back on his experience during the anti-Japan riots in 2012, Wan, the sales rep from Beijing, said he worried that the government’s promotion of patriotism and tolerance towards nationalism would endanger Chinese society in the long run.
“I think President Xi told American President Biden a few years ago that those who play with fire will get burned,” he said.
“I think that is also the case for anyone in China that plays too much with the flames of nationalism.”
If free and fair national elections are considered the hallmark of a democratic state, Taiwan has much to boast about.
In January, the self-ruled island held its eighth presidential election concurrently with a parliamentary vote.
Just 160km (100 miles) away on the other side of the narrow Taiwan Strait, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has ruled China since 1949, and though the party often claims that it governs a democratic state, there is no electoral process comparable with Taiwan’s.
China’s President Xi Jinping has referred to “whole-process people’s democracy” to describe the Chinese political system where the “people are the masters” but the party-state apparatus runs the people’s affairs on their behalf.
Ken Cai*, a 35-year-old entrepreneur from Shanghai, does not subscribe to Xi’s definition of democracy.
“The truth is that [mainland] Chinese people have never been allowed to choose their own leaders,” Ken told Al Jazeera.
“That is just propaganda.”
Ken’s critical assessment stands in sharp contrast to an assertion often presented by the CPC that their one-party rule is considered satisfactory by Chinese people.
President Xi has long said that China is following a unique development path under the guidance of its distinctive system of governance. Chinese officials have also presented criticism of Beijing’s record on human rights and democracy as being based on a lack of understanding of China and the Chinese people.
President Xi takes his oath during the third plenary session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing in March 2023 [File: Mark R Cristino/Pool via Reuters]
That is why Taiwan’s hosting of successful multiparty elections challenges Beijing’s argument that liberal democracy is incompatible with Chinese culture.
At the same time, Taiwan’s liberal democratic system clashes with Xi’s vision of a rejuvenated Chinese nation firmly under the CPC’s control and a wayward Taiwan eventually unified with the Chinese mainland.
“The Taiwanese experience is a clear affront to the CPC narrative,” said Chong Ja Ian, associate professor of China’s foreign policy at the National University of Singapore.
Taiwanese elections are a far more sensitive topic for Beijing than elections in other democracies as the democratic example being set by Taipei can be a more direct source of inspiration for people in mainland China, said Yaqiu Wang, research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at the United States-based advocacy group Freedom House.
“When you see that people from your own in-group have democracy and can elect their leaders, it can cause particular frustration with your own non-elected leaders,” Wang said.
“That makes Taiwanese elections a threat to the CPC,” she added.
China censoring Taiwanese elections
It was perhaps not surprising that while leaders from countries such as Japan, the Philippines and the US congratulated Taiwan on the successful conclusion of its elections, the Chinese government did not.
Relations between China and Taiwan have been in a downward spiral ever since the outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, was elected in 2016.
The CPC views Tsai, her replacement President-elect William Lai Ching-te, and other members of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as foreign-backed separatists and has not ruled out the use of force in its future plans to unify Taiwan with China.
Chen Binhua, spokesperson for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), reacted to the election results by saying that Lai’s 40 percent vote share and the DPP’s loss of its parliamentary majority revealed that the party “cannot represent mainstream public opinion on the island”, and the outcome “will not impede the inevitable trend of China’s reunification”.
On social media in China, many reacted to Chen’s comments by focusing on Beijing’s own democratic credentials.
“Enough, already – how can you criticise others’ elections when you don’t even allow elections at home,” one user wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
“So a general election doesn’t represent mainstream public opinion? What new sort of understanding is this?” read another comment, while a third even attacked Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office directly: “[TAO is] the most shameless, useless, piece-of-trash government department.”
All three comments have since been removed by censors.
Ailene Long*, a 31-year-old translator from the Chinese city of Shenzhen, told Al Jazeera that she found comments criticising Taiwan’s election ridiculous when measured against the shortcomings in China’s political system.
“You can’t ask questions about public opinion in Taiwan when people in China have never been allowed to choose anything other than the Communist Party,” Ailene said.
Freedom House’s Wang observed a lot of similar Chinese responses popping up across Chinese social media platforms as the Taiwanese election results came in.
“But a lot of them were quickly removed – even within a couple of minutes many were gone,” she told Al Jazeera.
Hashtags, comments and news about the Taiwanese election were repeatedly removed from Chinese social media by the state’s vast censorship network. Along with the tight censorship, there were also signs that the Chinese authorities on Taiwan’s election day had tried to drown the interest on Chinese social media by inflating other hashtags.
Such actions were a way for the authorities to remove displays of public criticism, according to Wang, but the underlying sentiment remained one of discontent with the Beijing government.
China’s democratic deficit in tough economic times
Ken Cai from Shanghai thinks that a lot of the online commentary about Taiwan’s election was really about airing dissatisfaction with the situation in China.
“The economy is not good for a lot of people, many are struggling so they take the opportunity to release their frustration with the government,” he explained.
Ken recounted how his grandparents told him how they used to be afraid of Taiwan’s Nationalists attacking China, and that they heard stories from Taiwan about crackdowns on Taiwanese people.
After the Kuomintang (KMT), known as the Chinese Nationalists, were defeated by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, they fled to Taiwan in 1949 where they initially held ambitions about reconquering mainland China. To cement their hold over Taiwan, the KMT imposed martial law, cracked down on civil liberties and rounded up Taiwanese opposed to their rule.
“But today it seems like Taiwan has free elections, a good economy, good relations with Western countries while China has none of those things,” he said.
In his view, the democratic deficit in China became particularly apparent during the COVID-19 outbreak in Shanghai in 2022 when most of the metropolis was placed under a strict lockdown.
“The lockdown was worse than COVID,” he said.
“A lot of people suffered, but the government didn’t listen to us or care about us, and maybe that would have been different in a more democratic system.”
COVID-19 pandemic prevention workers gather before their shift in front of buildings where residents are quarantined in lockdown at home in Beijing, in December 2022 [Thomas Peter/Reuters]
For Ailene Long in Shenzhen, the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic convinced her that China needs political reform with the recent Taiwanese elections presenting an attractive alternative.
Ailene paid close attention to the elections in Taiwan where she studied at a university for two years beginning in 2013. Now the chilly air blowing between Beijing and Taipei has made it increasingly difficult for her to arrange work trips and visit her friends in Taiwan.
“So, I was hoping that the opposition party would get elected this time so that things would get easier again,” she said, referring to Taiwan’s largest opposition party, KMT, which has traditionally been more China-friendly than the DPP.
On the election weekend, she was disappointed when the final vote tally showed a victory for the DPP’s Lai, but at the same time, she respects the result.
“And I think the Chinese government should learn to respect such elections as well and perhaps also be more open to having similar ones in China,” she said.
“If the Taiwanese can have free elections with different political parties, then why can’t we?”
Ailene also believes that democratic reforms would strengthen the CPC’s legitimacy in China and its claim that the Chinese people are their own masters.
“That would show that they are serious about a people’s democracy.”
*Names were altered to respect their requests for anonymity given the sensitivity of the topic.
A honeymoon in Western Tibet came to a tragic end in October when the newlyweds crashed their car on a mountain road after suffering altitude sickness.
Sitting in the passenger seat, 27-year-old Yu Yanyan from Shanghai was badly injured.
Despite being transferred to a local hospital, rapid haemorrhaging and a lack of adequate blood stocks meant that she was unlikely to make it.
But drawing on the couple’s network and connections, Yu’s husband was able to secure blood donations from local civil servants and members of the public in that area of Tibet that helped to stabilise his bride.
Yu’s father then arranged a chartered plane to fly her to a larger hospital for more advanced surgery.
The operation to save Yu’s life was a remarkable effort in China – where many lack access to quality healthcare – especially in remote regions, such as Tibet.
Some also said it was unbelievable.
Success stories meet a sceptical Chinese public
Bai Xinhui, who is also from Shanghai like Yu, began to follow the story after a now-recovering Yu posted a video about her near-death experience.
“It was really beautiful to hear how so many people worked together and contributed to saving her life,” Bai, a 26-year-old UX designer, told Al Jazeera.
At the same time though, Bai was left wondering whether ”a regular person could get so much help”.
“Maybe her husband and her have very good connections or come from very rich families,” Bai said.
“Maybe it’s all true, maybe it’s only half true,” she said, suspicious that some of the details of the rescue might have been altered to make public officials appear in a more positive light.
“It is sometimes difficult to know what to believe and who to believe in China these days,” she added.
Bai is not the only one who has pondered the circumstances and details of Yu’s ordeal.
When the story gained national media attention and went viral on Chinese social media in November and December, people started to ask questions.
“How were they able to involve so many people to help her and how were they able to do it so fast?” asked Li Xueqing, a 31-year-old marketing specialist from Suzhou.
“Chinese healthcare is very bad in many places, so I don’t think Yu’s story shows how patients in her situation are normally treated,” Li said to Al Jazeera.
Yu’s survival has shifted from the story of a dramatic rescue to symbolising entitlement and privilege in contemporary China, with some referring to her as the “Shanghai princess” in Tibet.
Lhasa in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China, in 2020 [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters]
The story became so prominent that it resulted in Chinese authorities and media looking into signs of wrongdoing regarding the resources mobilised to save Yu.
So far, there is little evidence suggesting that any abuse of positions or power played a role.
Around the same time that Yu’s rescue was being dissected by a sceptical online community in China, another story about overcoming incredible odds began trending on Chinese social media.
It too was met by equally cheerless responses.
A lottery player in the central Chinese city of Nanchang won the equivalent of almost $31m from the state-run Welfare Lottery in early December.
The winner had reportedly spent a sum of $14,000 on nearly 50,000 sets of identical lottery numbers that each won him approximately $625.
Additionally, his total winnings were tax-free due to the relatively small prize money on each individual bet.
The circumstances instantly raised suspicions.
“He probably had help from someone on the inside,” one user on the Chinese social media platform, Weibo, speculated.
Both China’s healthcare sector and the state lottery have previously been plagued by stories of embezzlement and corruption.
“There is a lot of money taken and bribes given in many sectors in China, so of course we are suspicious,” Li from Suzhou said about the incredulous effort to rescue Yu in Tibet and the unprecedented lottery win in Nanchang.
The outpouring of public scepticism also suggests a lack of alignment between successes in life and the experiences of everyday Chinese people, said Jodie Peng, a high school teacher from Shenzhen.
“Most people haven’t won big in the lottery or experienced a whole community helping them during a medical emergency,” she told Al Jazeera.
People buy scratch cards at an outlet of the China Welfare Lottery in Beijing, China [File Adrian Bradshaw/EPA]
Peng also had her own faith in China’s healthcare system tested in recent years.
Her grandfather died last year from COVID-19 in a crowded public hospital before overworked medical staff had a chance to properly tend to him. Peng also fell victim to medical fraud in connection with post-surgery treatment she received a few years back.
“So, of course, it was nice to hear about the lottery winner in Nanchang and the successful rescue of the Shanghai woman in Tibet. But those things don’t happen in the Chinese world that I live in,” she said.
China’s party-approved ‘positive energy’ stories
According to associate professor Yao-Yuan Yeh, who teaches Chinese studies at the University of St Thomas in the United States, stories that circulate in China’s media and online often reflect the desired narratives of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) more so than the lived experiences of the public.
“The Chinese internet is filled with stories backed by the Chinese state,” Yeh told Al Jazeera.
China’s leaders have repeatedly called for the media to disseminate stories with “positive energy” to lift up and inspire people.
With the internet heavily surveilled and regulated in China, stories and commentary that do not support the mandates of the government can be quickly removed by censors without warning or explanation.
So, when public data showed that Chinese youth unemployment was hitting a record 21.3 percent in June, China’s censors shut down critical discussions about the figures online and removed negative comments about the state of the Chinese economy.
The following month, the publication of China’s youth jobless data was suspended.
Combatting ”negativity” has also resulted in the authorities targeting individuals.
When a Wuhan-based doctor, Li Wenliang, began to warn colleagues in early December 2019 about the emergence of a virulent respiratory illness that would later come to be known as COVID-19, he was arrested by police for “spreading rumours”.
Li would succumb to the virus a few months later.
A security guard tries to remove posters in memory of the late doctor Li Wenliang with other doctors at the Central Hospital of Wuhan on the anniversary of his death, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, on February 7, 2021 [Aly Song/Reuters]
The lengths that some are willing to go to stifle bad news in China drew ridicule online last year when a student at a college in Nanchang discovered a rat’s head in his cafeteria rice meal, which canteen staff, the school and a local food supervision bureau all claimed was duck meat.
The catering company then threatened legal actions against anyone “spreading rumours” about their food, while students were told by school staff not to discuss the rodent’s head in the rice.
“When those in power even try to cover up a rat head, it is difficult to trust anything you hear or see in the media,” Li from Suzhou said.
Peng from Shenzhen concurred.
“There are so many problems in China right now with the economy, with corruption, and with many other things,” she said.
“You can’t hide it all behind some positive stories,” she added.
“We should be able to openly discuss China’s problems otherwise the lack of trust is just going to spread.”
Danny Jia was walking down a street outside Taiwan’s Taoyuan city in late December when he suddenly heard automatic gunfire.
Not far from Jia’s location that morning, the 249th mechanised infantry brigade of the Taiwanese armed forces was conducting military drills at Guanyin beach on the island’s northwest coast.
“I was so startled that I almost dropped my phone,” the 46-year-old civil servant told Al Jazeera.
“The exercises are also a scary reminder that a war might actually come to Taiwan in the future,” Jia said.
Guanyin beach is one of Taiwan’s so-called “red beaches” – stretches of the coastline that in the event of a Chinese invasion, offer the most favourable conditions for amphibious landing assaults.
For China’s military planners, Guanyin beach would be particularly suitable as it lies less than 18 kilometres (11 miles) from Taiwan’s primary international airport, and only about 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the outskirts of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.
Democratic and self-ruled Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control.
In his new year speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping called Taiwan’s unification with mainland China “inevitable”.
With the ever-present threat of China’s troops spilling onto Taiwan’s shores one day, Jia believes that the military drills on red beaches serve an important purpose in preparing the Taiwanese military for the worst.
Recently, however, Jia has found himself convinced that such a scenario is far from certain due to events in China’s own military ranks.
At the end of December, nine high-ranking military officers were removed from their positions.
Several of those axed were from the Chinese military’s elite “rocket force”, which oversees China’s tactical and nuclear missiles.
Earlier, in August, two leading figures in the rocket force were likewise removed.
That same month, the then-Chinese defence minister, Li Shuangfu, went missing.
Li has since been dismissed and replaced by Dong Jun.
With so many changes among the top brass, Jia said he failed to see how the Chinese armed forces could be prepared for the complex planning involved in a large-scale assault on Taiwan in the near future.
“I think there is too much chaos in China’s military for that,” he said.
A limited Taiwanese respite
People in Taiwan have reasons to feel more secure, according to Christina Chen, a research fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) think tank.
“The removal of senior officers demonstrates that Xi Jinping is clearly not confident in the military, and that reduces the likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan in the near term,” Chen told Al Jazeera.
The relatively large number of Chinese officers expelled in such a short time can also affect the armed forces’ fighting spirit as uncertainty spreads as to who will be targeted next.
“More removals might follow and that could further weaken the morale of the military and its ability to fight,” Chen said.
While the risk of an imminent conflict in the Taiwan Strait may have been reduced, Chen sees Beijing’s long-term goal of taking over Taiwan staying firmly in place.
China’s new defence minister, Dong Jun, has experience with military matters regarding Taiwan from his previous roles as commander of the Chinese navy, deputy commander of the Southern Theatre Command and deputy commander of China’s East Sea Fleet.
Although a defence minister serves mostly a diplomatic and public role in China, the appointment of the highly experienced Dong Jun was not arbitrary, according to Chen.
It reflects Beijing’s overall ambition of turning China into a maritime power that can rival the United States and eventually annex Taiwan, she said.
Beijing has in recent years increasingly projected its growing maritime and air power in Taiwan’s direction.
Sabre-rattling rhetoric and large-scale military drills in the waters close to Taiwan have also accompanied times of particular tension.
This was the case in the aftermath of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022 and after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s stopover in San Francisco last year where she met with Pelosi’s successor, Kevin McCarthy.
Some observers expect a similarly assertive Chinese reaction leading up to President-elect William Lai Ching-te taking office in May following his victory in the Taiwanese presidential election on January 13.
Beijing has branded Lai a separatist and declared that the election result would not change the Chinese government’s stance on Taiwan’s unification with the mainland.
Chen sees Beijing’s pressure campaign directed at Taiwan continuing despite the dismissals in the Chinese military ranks.
“That will not change no matter how many military officers are removed,” she said.
The biggest purge
According to Associate Professor Alfred Wu, a scholar specialising in corruption and governance in China at the National University of Singapore, the removal of Chinese military officials is more than a simple shake-up.
“In addition to the anticorruption effort, it is a purge,” Wu told Al Jazeera.
“Xi Jinping is strengthening his hold over the military and sending a signal to all those that are not completely aligned with him that they might be next and therefore should be afraid,” he said.
Wu described the use of fear as a tool employed to try to secure loyalty in China’s authoritarian state structure where a lack of oversight and transparency can easily result in corruption and poor governance.
Since Xi came to power in 2012, several anticorruption campaigns have resulted in purges throughout the Chinese state apparatus.
The Chinese military has long had a reputation for corruption, but the fact that the army’s elite rocket force has been targeted is unprecedented.
The scale of the crackdown has left observers describing it as one of the biggest in Chinese military history.
Under the rule of Xi, who has called for the military’s absolute loyalty, purges are, in Wu’s words, “a continuous process”.
Purges might even grow in frequency and magnitude, according to Wu, as the legitimacy that the Chinese government enjoyed during the country’s economic boom years comes under strain at a time when the Chinese economy is showing signs of weakness.
“The economic situation might cause insecurity to grow within the Chinese government leading them to take more hawkish steps to secure loyalty within the state and in the military,” he said.
However, continuing purges within the Chinese military may have a lingering impact on its capabilities.
“It’s difficult to fight a war if many of your generals are in jail,” Wu said.
Back on the outskirts of Taoyuan city near one of Taiwan’s “red beaches”, Jia, the civil servant who was startled by the military exercises in December, said that he doesn’t wish ill on anyone.
But he also hopes the purges continue if they protect peace.
“I hope that more Chinese officers will lose their jobs if it means we won’t get a war.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping renewed his longstanding vow to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s heel in a speech marking the late Communist leader Mao Zedong’s 130th birthday.
“The complete reunification of our motherland is an overall trend, a righteous cause, and the common aspiration of the people,” the 70-year-old proclaimed Tuesday, according to the South China Morning Post. “Our motherland must be reunified, and it will surely be reunified.”
Taiwan has operated as a self-governing island since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, with its own government, currency, and military.
Beijing has long maintained that Taiwan is part of China and Xi has kept military force on the table to bring about a reunification, though he reportedly told President Biden last month that his preference is to annex the island peacefully.
Xi Jinping voiced opposition to any international efforts to separate China from Taiwan. ZUMAPRESS.com
For decades, the US has observed a so-called “One China” policy, which acknowledges Beijing’s claim to the island, but does not recognize it.
Meanwhile, officials in Washington have kept the specter of military intervention on the table if China attempts to invade.
Biden has repeatedly suggested that the US would take military action if China invades Taiwan, only for the White House to repeatedly backpedal on some of those suggestions.
Taiwan is set to hold its presidential election next month. Brennan O’Connor/ZUMA / SplashNews.com
During Tuesday’s speech in Beijing, Xi also hailed Mao as a “spiritual treasure.”
Ironically, Mao had Xi’s father purged from the Chinese Communist Party, while the future leader was sent to work in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution of the late-1960s. Xi ultimately was accepted back into the CCP fold at the tenth time of asking in the mid-1970s.
China has been building up its military at a fervent clip. AFP/Getty Images
Taiwan is poised to hold presidential elections in January, and Western officials have expressed fears that the CCP may meddle in the vote.
Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen, whose Democratic Progressive Party has endorsed Taiwanese nationalism and close ties with the US, is term-limited and therefore not able to vie for reelection as president.
A good result on China’s annual national civil service exam is a requirement for any Chinese candidate who wants to be considered for the tens of thousands of vacant civil service jobs that the government seeks to fill every year.
Many of the vacant positions are reserved for recent Chinese graduates.
When 22-year-old recent graduate Du Xin sat down for the exam in December last year at a test centre in the city of Shijiazhuang in China’s Hebei province, she had been studying vigorously for six months.
Some applicants even hire tutors to prepare them for the exam.
Candidates are tested broadly on their general knowledge and analytical skills while in more recent years they have also been tested on their grasp of “Xi thought” – Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ideology and vision for China.
Despite her months of preparation, Du knew that the odds that her test result would bring her closer to a government job were slim.
As she began the exam, so, too, did millions of other Chinese youths across hundreds of Chinese cities.
“The competition is fierce,” Du told Al Jazeera.
That year the chance of securing a civil service position was 70 to one.
A candidate makes last-minute preparations to sit for the Chinese civil service examinations, which nationwide, millions of candidates sit to qualify for thousands of job vacancies in the government, in Hefei, east China’s Anhui province in 2011 [File: AFP]
Therefore, Du was surprised and thrilled when she learned that she did well on the exam and subsequently landed a job as an organiser at the local office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shijiazhuang.
This year, the competition looked to be even more fierce as the number of candidates sitting down for the exam at the end of November surpassed three million for the first time.
The number of vacant government positions has not kept up, lowering the odds of securing a job like Du’s from 70 to 1 to 77 to 1, according to the state-run Global Times.
Du is not surprised by the high number of applicants.
“I think a lot of young people in China really want a stable job right now,” she said.
Candidates prepare to take China’s national civil service exam in a university in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu province, in 2013 [File: AFP]
Job security is an ‘iron rice bowl’
The appeal of stable employment was what drew Du to the civil service exam last year at a time of economic turmoil in China.
“I felt a bit lost after I finished my graduate studies, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she told Al Jazeera. “But I knew I wanted a job where I could feel secure and have free time, and that made me interested in government work.”
Although employment in China’s civil service rarely pays as well as comparable employment in the Chinese private sector, there are other benefits. Civil servants usually have access to better medical insurance, a preferential pension plan, consistent bonus pay-outs and secure lifetime employment.
The security that comes with a public position has given rise to the nickname, “iron rice bowl”.
Iron rice bowls are coveted by some traditional Chinese parents for their children – not just for stability but because some see obtaining such jobs as a recognition of excellence by the state.
Candidates queueing to take the national examination for admissions to the civil service in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province in 2021 [File: AFP]
An important aspect of life as a civil servant for Du is the working hours.
“I work from 9am to 5pm, and I don’t have to work on weekends,” Du said.
Many of Du’s friends in the private sector work the 996 system – 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
“Compared to them, I have a lot more free time to enjoy my hobbies,” she said.
Yang Jiang was also not surprised by the record number of applicants for China’s civil service exam this year.
Jiang is a scholar of China’s economic policies and a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.
The number of applicants has been growing quickly in recent years, and according to Jiang, one reason is the equally high number of Chinese graduates entering the job market.
In 2023 alone, almost 11.6 million Chinese finished their studies, the highest number ever.
But the overarching reason for the high number of civil service exam applicants is the Chinese economy, Jiang told Al Jazeera.
“The economic situation is uncertain in China,” she said.
Candidates arrive for China’s national civil service exam in a university in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu province, in 2013 [File: AFP]
The Chinese economy has been struggling to reach the growth rates of earlier years, the housing market is in the deepest slump in decades and foreign direct investment struck a deficit in the July-September period of 2023 for the first time recorded.
For Chinese graduates, circumstances look particularly grim: youth unemployment hit a record high of 21.3 percent in June before the authorities stopped publishing the numbers.
“The private sector in particular has seen a lot of layoffs in the economic downturn,” Jiang explained.
“That has naturally made more Chinese graduates look towards the public sector for the sort of job security that is currently missing in the private sector,” she said.
‘They can’t make us disappear’
Like Du, 23-year-old Chris Liao from Guangdong province in southern China graduated last year with a master’s degree in public administration. He also signed up for the civil service exam.
“I didn’t make it past the written exam,” he told Al Jazeera.
Afterwards, Liao was unable to find a job within his field of study, forcing him to work as a cook for a while before he moved back with his parents outside Guangzhou, the largest metropolis in Guangdong.
He is now among the millions of unemployed young people in China.
“I feel like life got really difficult when COVID hit and ever since it hasn’t stopped getting difficult,” he explained.
Liao believes that the government’s COVID-19 strategy is the cause of many of the economic problems plaguing China today.
“So it is the government’s responsibility to do more to make the situation better,” he said.
According to observers, the large number of unemployed youth in China’s major cities is a significant cause for concern for the party-state.
One Communist organisation in Liao’s Guangzhou even presented a plan in March about sending unemployed youths to the countryside to foster rural development.
Such a plan hearkens back to Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s during which time millions of urban youths were sent to the countryside in a period of political and social upheaval that caused the deaths of at least two million people.
In January, President Xi also spoke about Chinese youths “revitalising” the countryside.
Liao does not believe that such plans are realistic in modern times, however.
“They can’t make us disappear into the countryside,” he said.
“There are too many of us, and we are growing in number.”
For years, Chinese media has portrayed the United States as an unfriendly nation that seeks to contain and weaken China on the world stage.
The US has repeatedly been cast as a threat to world peace in Chinese media owing to Washington’s policies of arming Taiwan, sending military assistance to Ukraine, and supporting Israel’s war on Gaza.
So when stories in Chinese media suddenly began to appear about “strengthening China-US ties” and “the bonds of friendship between Americans and Chinese”, it naturally did not go unnoticed.
In the weeks before the long-awaited November 15 meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in San Francisco, China’s media softened its strident rhetoric.
State-run Xinhua news agency reported on a letter Xi sent to an American war veteran, who had served in the US Air Force group nicknamed the Flying Tigers and who fought with the Chinese military against the Japanese during World War II.
In the letter, Xi addresses relations between China and the US, noting a deep friendship forged between the two countries “that withstood the test of blood and fire”.
China’s Communist party-controlled People’s Daily, which earlier this year called the US a warlike country, promoted a collection of articles commemorating the Flying Tigers in the same week as Biden met Xi.
The 50th anniversary of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s visit to Beijing in 1973 also became a topic of focus, as well as Xi’s various trips to the US starting with his first visit in 1985, which he spent in Iowa where, we are told, “he fostered friendships with American people”.
Even the outspoken state-run Global Times, which in an editorial in October described the US as being “stained with the blood of innocent civilians” in Gaza, called for greater cooperation between Beijing and Washington on the day of the Biden-Xi meeting. A far cry from two months earlier, when Global Times described the US getting “nastier and nastier” in its attacks on China.
China’s nationalist commentators have followed the media’s softening tone too.
Commentator Hu Xijin, who once called for Chinese air strikes on Taiwan to “eliminate” US troops on the democratically-ruled island, wrote in a recent opinion piece of the need for expanded China-US cooperation.
Nationalistic blogger Sima Nan, who once described the US as a “rotten, crime-ridden place”, suddenly claimed that he was striving “to promote friendly Sino-American relations”.
The abrupt change of perspective on the US by China’s media and public figures can seem very confusing, said Vicky Tseng, 34, who works with social media at an advertisement company in Shanghai.
“But it is the Chinese government that sets the tone for Chinese media. So before Xi met Biden the government clearly decided that it was time for China to like America more,” she told Al Jazeera.
President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping walk in the gardens at the Filoli estate in Woodside, California, on November 15, 2023, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative (APEC) conference [Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP]
Alfred Wu, a scholar of public governance in China at the National University of Singapore, also said that it was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) headed by President Xi that sets the tone in the Chinese media landscape.
“There has been a very clear development towards greater state control over the media in China in recent years, leaving very little space for media that are not affiliated with the government,” Wu told Al Jazeera.
According to the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, China was second from the bottom of the world press freedom index for 2023, just ahead of last place North Korea.
“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s largest prison for journalists, and its regime conducts a campaign of repression against journalism and the right to information worldwide,” the group said.
“It doesn’t really matter what type of media you are these days,” said Titus Chen, a researcher on Chinese social media policies at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan.
“If you want to survive in the Chinese media market, you have to toe the party line,” he said.
And the party’s new line clearly sought to emphasise more cordial elements of China-US ties leading up to the Biden-Xi meeting, according to Chen.
“The change in media coverage is due to a renewed wish for more stability in the bilateral relations, particularly given the current economic situation in China,” he said.
China’s economic growth has struggled to reach government targets, youth unemployment hit 21.3 percent in June – before authorities stopped publishing data – and China recorded its first-ever foreign direct investment deficit in the July-September period of 2023.
“China has been trying to send a signal through its propaganda to the US and the West that China is ready to cooperate on a number of issues with the hope that this will secure more foreign investments,” Chen said.
Softer tones unlikely to last
The bleak economic situation has not been portrayed by Chinese media as a factor in the Biden-Xi meeting, according to Tseng, the advertising junior executive.
In fact, US economic restrictions imposed on China have been described in the Global Times as giving rise to breakthroughs in Chinese chip technology.
Xi’s oft-mentioned mantra about people-to-people exchanges and his championing of such exchanges along with his own interactions with American people over the years were portrayed in China’s media as having led to a successful APEC summit.
It was also pointed out that Xi received several standing ovations during an APEC dinner with business leaders and that points of cooperation outlined by Xi had opened a “vision for the future of China-US relations”.
Even two weeks after the summit, the People’s Daily described Xi’s endorsement of people-to-people ties as an inspiration for both Americans and Chinese that will generate “more positive energy for the healthy development of China-US relations”.
According to Wu, it was imperative for Chinese media to make Xi the centre of the APEC summit.
“The underlying message is that Xi is a very capable statesman [who] can negotiate with the US and can lead China to a better place,” he said.
Chinese media narratives regarding the US continuing in a more positive direction in the future are unlikely, observers said.
“I think the atmosphere can quickly become unfriendly again,” Tseng said. “And I have still found anti-US content on Chinese media the past weeks, so it never completely disappeared.”
While the positive atmosphere appeared to survive Biden calling Xi a dictator at the end of the APEC summit, the day after the meeting the Global Times released a cartoon sketch meant to illustrate hypocrisy in US foreign policy.
China and the US still have fundamental differences regarding foreign policy, particularly when it comes to the South China Sea and Taiwan, and these differences can easily and quickly sour the mood, Wu said.
Chen is also not optimistic that the soft touch towards the US in China’s media will survive.
“A pro-Taiwan gesture from an American politician might be all that it will take for the coverage to revert back to how it was before,” he said.
“And the day where that happens might come sooner than we all expect.”
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