China's political bigwigs held a meeting last month which was supposed to help set a course for the future. One of the country's top commentators attempted to parse the bureaucratese coming out of the meeting and got himself in hot water with the communist party, leading to his silencing online and criticism from state media.

To really appreciate this, you need to know that Hu Xijin has been one of China's leading commentators for many years. Until 2021 he was the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a state-run paper that is published in Chinese and English for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party. You won't find any criticism of China or President Xi Jinping in the Global Times. What you will find is a string of anti-American, pro-China stories in which the CCP is always portrayed as a hero on the national and world stage. And as I said, Hu Xijin was the top guy for many years, who acted as a sort of smug, unofficial voice for the party. He said, often bluntly, what they believed to be true.

Even after Hu stepped down as editor in 2021 after 28 years of service, he continued publishing commentary in Chinese and English. For example, in 2022 he tweeted that the People's Liberation Army had the right to shoot down Nancy Pelosi's plane if she were to visit Taiwan. Some of his fans were disappointed when that didn't happen.

But getting back to the meeting of bigwigs last month, it seems that Hu irritated Chinese communists when he suggested that more economic freedom and a bit less communism would be a big step forward for China. His post suggesting as much was pulled down and for nearly two weeks all of his social media accounts have gone silent.

The former editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times was banned from posting on social media after he wrote controversial comments about the world's second-largest economy, Bloomberg reported on Thursday (Aug 1), citing a “person familiar with the matter”...

At the heart of the matter is a now-deleted article Mr Hu posted on his WeChat account on Jul 22, weighing in on the outcomes of the third plenum, a reform-focused meeting by the upper echelons of China’s Communist Party (CCP)...

He argued that the omission of the phrase “public ownership playing a dominant role” was a “historic change” that showed China hoped to “achieve true equality between the private and the state-owned economy”.

“Chinese society’s understanding, attitude and narrative of various ownership relations will have a big step forward,” Mr Hu wrote.

He really was trying to praise the party, but it turned out he praised them in the wrong way. Any suggestion that less communism would be a good thing for China is strictly forbidden. In addition to being canceled, Hu was also attacked by state media and pro-communist commentators.

Hu’s comments in the article, which has since been removed from WeChat, triggered widespread criticism on Chinese social media outlets, as some conservative commentators accused him of misinterpreting the resolution, which vowed to “consolidate and develop the state-owned economy.”

In addition to online criticism, China’s state-run People’s Daily also published an opinion article on July 30, reiterating that China’s fundamental position on the state and private sectors has not changed and will not change in the future.

For his part, Hu refused to comment on the situation, saying literally "I don’t want to say anything." That's a smart move because it's possible that what he said is actually a crime in China. If he weren't so well known as a pro-CCP mouthpiece, this might have been much worse for him.

“The new Chinese Communist Party Disciplinary Regulations explicitly forbids people like Hu from jumping the gun like he did,” Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at Australian National University, told VOA in a written response...

“There is less and less tolerance for outspoken people like Hu in China these days, so I don’t think something like this [can] happen to him without there being longer-term repercussions,” he told VOA.

This cancelation will end eventually but it will serve as a reminder to Hu not to get ahead of his communist masters in the future. It also serves as a warning to everyone else. If one of the top commentators in the country can be silenced in an instant after 28 years of service, just imagine what could happen to a regular person who crosses that line.

Note: The photo above is captioned "people applaud as Chinese President Xi Jinping, center, talks with editors in the general newsroom of the People's Daily in Beijing."