Communism is the only political system to have created its own international brand of comedy. The standard interpretation is that communist jokes were a form of resistance. But they were also a safety valve for the regimes and jokes were told by the rulers as well as the ruled—even Stalin told some good ones
If you are really into it, here is 290 pages Ph.D thesis: A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSO-SOVIET ANEKDOT - by Seth Benedict Graham.
And Wikipedia has some more jokes.
Nowadays in China, our dear supreme leader is as popular as ever because people believe that the COVID Zero policy was imposed by him, at all and any cost to the people and the country. As we saw already in Newsletter 81, the censorship is required to protect our dear supreme leader’s public image at all and any cost.
RuBao (辱包), aka insulting Bao (zi), is therefore a popular game on social media. Because of the cat and mouse game between social media users and censors, one side is getting more creative, while the other side is becoming faster and faster to try to catch them.
So, let’s translate some of the jokes.
Beida is the Peking University, where Premier Li Keqiang got his Ph.D. Qinghua is an equally prestigious elite university in China, where our dear supreme leader got his LL.D.
This joke is from Zhihu, the Chinese Quora: (rough translation)
Q: How do you take the comment made by Li Xueqin (a talk show host in China): “We have to allow some graduates from Peking University not to achieve much. “
A: I am not sure of Peking University. But those graduated from Qinghua can just resign if they are not up to the job, and don’t try to over stay.
The person who posted the answer said that the platform deleted his answer in 10 minutes.
This is supposedly from Zhihu censor department.
Q: who is the public figure that you look down upon most?
A: He.
A group of the Zhihu people debated it for a while, and decided that it can not pass.
Some one is trying to post a question on Zhihu:
Can ordinary people carry 100 kilogram of things walking for 5 kilometres?
Zhihu response: Deleted, because it contains illegal topics or topic that is controversial.
This is because our dear supreme leader went on TV to claim that he had done just that. Some big muscled men in Taiwan went to test it, and they only managed 550 meters.
Someone showed a Zhihu notice that his answer to a question was deleted because the question “contains illegal topics or topic that is controversial.”
The question was: “The elderly in my family bought a cell phone in 2012. They planned to use it for 10 years and change it afterwards. But now he wants to use it for another 10 years. How can I talk him out of it?”
A very heavy Panda baby was born and the official media is soliciting names on Weibo. The mother’s name is “翠翠”.
The 翠 character is composed of 习 “Xi” (twice) on top of 卒 which means “Died”.
So, many people left comments saying just “翠” is great enough!
This forced the state media to block comments and Weibo to suspend accounts.
Someone on Weibo posted a photo, captioned “Dutch people heard that Hitler just died”.
Many people commented: I found someone to replace Hitler.
And of course some of them lost their accounts.
(The photo “Dutch Resistance members celebrating upon hearing the news of Adolf Hitler’s death, May 1945 ww2dbase” is also the album cover of No Tengas Miedo. Reddit has a colorized version ))
As you can see, Xi is immensely unpopular right now in China, because of the COVID Zero policy. The solution, to many people, is to imagine that Li Keqiang can replace him, as Li is widely considered closer to the people.
This was the pattern in the last 70 years, where the premier appeared closer to the people than the secretary general, so people always have some illusion that the premier is better, especially in hard times.
These two pictures are very popular on Chinese social media:
You see, Li is much closer to the people.
The rumour that Li could possibly take over in the fall, when the next government is decided, even got some traction outside China. Then Supchina published an article: The Li vs Xi silly season
Rumours, tweets, and even reports in serious newspapers are suggesting that Premier Li Keqiang is challenging Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule, and may even put an end to Xi’s plans to rule for a third term after the upcoming Party Congress. Forget about it, argues veteran China business journalist Dexter Tiff Roberts.
If you happen to live in Brazil, you might have a chance to see some Chinese men dressed in Hanfu.