Decoding China’s doublespeak

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How the Chinese Communist Party gets lost in translation and whether it’s accidental or intentional. “The Belt and Road Initiative”, “community with a shared future for humankind”, “socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era” - the slogans and proclamations coming out of Beijing can sound abstract and bewildering. We examine the complex character of the language and how it’s put to use by the CCP to understand why its message can get lost on the outside world.

Contributor: Tom Lam Producer: Kriszta Satori, Elchin Suleymanov Presenter: Krassi Ivanova Twigg Music: Pete Cunningham

Transcript

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0:00.0	The socialism
0:07.0	only socialism could save China.
0:10.0	And that only socialism
0:13.0	could develop China.
0:16.0	The Belt and Road Initiative,
0:20.0	community with a shared future for humankind, socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era.
0:28.5	If you've ever felt bewildered by abstract sounding slogans and proclamations coming out of Beijing, you're not alone.
0:36.8	The ability to understand China requires a lifelong dedication.
0:41.2	I have a background in Chinese literature and Chinese history.
0:45.8	When I was young, I had an edium dictionary.
0:49.5	Each page teach you one Chinese idiom.
0:52.8	Some statistics say Chinese language has more than 50,000
0:57.7	idioms. There's a lot of rich cultural and historical reference in many of them.
1:05.6	And that comes in handy for your job. Yeah. Yeah. Interpreting the Chinese Communist Party's concepts and ideas
1:13.6	and how they might get lost in translation,
1:16.3	but with your help not?
1:18.1	I think Chinese Communist Party has a strand of the grand tradition
1:24.1	of Marxist and the Leninist theory,
1:27.5	so it came back to the leader,
1:29.7	tried to be suffocated.
1:31.7	Some of the slogans can be so grand and long.
1:35.3	Even the experts can stumble.
	...

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