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Posted via Alexander Boyd | April 2, 2024
Explaining a meme takes the joke’s breath away. In this case, this is not the case. A recent quote from Xi Jinping published through Xinhua, China’s official news agency, breathed new life into a long-standing meme poking fun at the secretary-general’s bravado.
A 2017 CCTV report on when Xi Jinping was a shunned young man showed an old clip of Xi boasting, “I would bring two hundred jin of wheat on a ten-li mountain road without even turning the shoulders. This was beyond comprehension. Two hundred jin equals about 220 pounds and 10 li equals about 3 miles. Netizens immediately scoffed at this claim: “Okay, you’re strong,” one user wrote, “I wouldn’t argue. “But don’t you replace the shoulders? It’s just plain stupid. An organization of Taiwanese strongmen tried (and failed) to mirror the feat.
This claim has temporarily become a shorthand way of mocking Xi’s nascent cult of usability and thus an object of censorship. The word “200 jin” prompted algorithmic censorship on WeChat, the song “Fragile” was censored after mocking the claim (among other jabs at Xi Jinping). and the Party), and in 2019, a guy summoned to “have tea” after saying he hoped Trump would “defeat the mastermind of ‘200 jin’ soon. “The word has also given rise to a number of delicate nicknames, including: “The Man Who Carries the Wheat,” “The Donkey Who Carries the Wheat,” “Without Changing Shoulders,” and the Chinese character 奭 shì, which sounds like a single user carrying a heavy load all over the country on his shoulders (the two radical 百 bái on the left and right mean “hundred”).
The question of why Xi (apparently) never put his shoulders back on while wearing wheat has remained unanswered, until now. In a recent Xinhua report on Xi Jinping’s “inspection trip” to Hunan, state media quoted Xi as saying that it was all in the interest of “food security,” an existing core political priority:
On the morning of the 21st, while listening to the reports of the Hunan Party Committee and the government, the General Secretary spoke about the link between food security and food loss and waste: “When I was a member of the production team in the village, we could not move to another country. Shoulders carrying wheat. A mistake in converting the shoulders and grain would spread and therefore be wasted. Today, the highest food losses occur in mechanical harvesting. We want to improve our machinery and concentrate on extensive agriculture. .
He ordered the Party and the Hunan government to shoulder the equivalent duty of achieving comprehensive food security, focusing on seed inputs and arable land, firmly protecting cultivated land, and resolutely prohibiting the conversion of arable land to non-agricultural uses. agricultural land for purposes other than food production. [Chinese]
Xi Jinping is very concerned about food security. A new CSIS study shows that Xi Jinping has personally engaged in food safety issues 67 times, most commonly through inspection trips like the recent one to Hunan, but also through meetings, letters, and instructions. Xi personally “led the way” on “food security” in September 2023. A July 2023 article from The Economist explains why the Party is obsessed with “food security” as the most sensible policy priority:
Beijing officials are obsessed with food security. Many Chinese are old enough to suffer from the famine caused by Mao Zedong’s policies in the late 1950s. This crisis killed tens of millions of people. Today, the legitimacy of the Communist Party rests in part on its ability to supply affordable food to an increasingly wealthy population. Therefore, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has advocated for greater self-sufficiency in food supply.
It was going to be a challenge. China accounts for about 20% of the world’s population, but owns less than 10% of its arable land. In recent decades, as the country has evolved and urbanized, its farmland has declined. Imports continue to play a vital role in food production. But they will most likely be affected by strained relations with countries such as the United States and Australia, or by conflicts such as the war in Ukraine.
Climate-related crises will make life even more complicated for M. Xi and the farmers he depends on. Take, for example, staple cereals that supply about a portion of the calories of an average Chinese. New droughts could reduce yields of maize, wheat and rice by 8% by 2030, according to a study funded by the Ministry of Agriculture. similar effect on some crops. Vegetables and crowning fruits are equally vulnerable to excessive weather and harder to buy for long periods of time, making it difficult for the government to build up reserves. One of the main effects of the severe drought that hit southern China last year was the rising costs of cucumbers and lettuce. [Source]
On Weibo, “without turning shoulders” is still a censored term. But on X (formerly Twitter), Chinese netizens joked about Xinhua’s publication of Xi’s explanation of the claim: “It seems that Lil’ Ping just can’t get over the ‘shoulder shift. ”Joke. ‘
Categories: CDT Featured,Culture
Tags:agriculture, food, food supply, Hunan, memes, user comments, internet users, online censorship, political humor, social media censorship, translation excerpt, Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping image, Xinhua