​People who have watched China’s political arena closely may have been noticing certain irregularly "weird" phenomena lately. Owing to China's strict information control measures, there is no way for the outside world to truly apprehend what is actually happening inside China‘s "thick" firewall. As a result, all kinds of "rumors" are floating around, which, however, in China are commonly understood by the Chinese people as "far-before-the-fact predictions". Honestly, subsequent developments, as it turned out “after the fact”, have repeatedly confirmed that many of these "rumors" have turned out to be "before-the-fact predictions". Hence, this situation has led to the coinage of a new Chinese word "遥言" (meaning "far-ahead predictions"), but pronounced the same in Chinese as "谣言" (meaning “rumors”). This unique way of coinage of a new lingual word "遥言" out of another word "谣言" reflects not only a phenomenon of linguistic evolution, but also that of social evolution, namely, a reflection of a twisted political culture in today’s China, which the Chinese people would have to "live with and swallow", but in a sarcastic way.

This week's "Hot-Spot News" will focus on these "rumors", or "far-ahead predictions", if you will, that have recently “leaked” out of China. They highlight the abnormally weird phenomena in the current political arena in China. But it is important to note that they leaked out of China at a time when a group of retired  "CCP elders" have gathered in Bei Dai He, a summer resort in northern China since the beginning of the summer. It is believed that while the elders gathered there to escape the summer heat, they also would meet to evaluate and assess the ruling CCP leadership’s "governance strategies" along with their resulting "accomplishments" --- positive or negative, as they might have been.

As we all know, ever since Xi Jinping took office towards the end of 2012, his “accomplishments”, if any, have been not only "mediocre", but also "full of bad results". Here are just a few examples that everyone may have witnessed:

1) China's economy has been in a downward spiral swiftly towards its “bottom” from its once world-admired peak: due to partly the disastrous collapse of China's real estate industry, as a whole, and its related markets all over the country.  The land-associated “financial resources" that used to fund local governments at all levels have now completely evaporated. Coupled with years of "selective anti-graft campaign", officials at all levels are "passively resistant" by "lying flat idly", and, hence, "involution" has become the "new normal" in China's officialdom; and this phenomenon has greatly hurt the local economy all over in China, further increasing public grievances.

2) Internationally, Xi Jinping misjudged the “world trend” as a “once-in-a-century” opportunity of "the rise of the East and decline of the West" and has engaged in "wolf-warrior diplomacy" against the US-led West, causing China to fall into an unprecedented isolation in the world. The United States and the European Union have cut back on their trade with, and investments in, China, scrambling to "decouple" with China, and conduiting their supply chains away from China towards Asian countries, such as Vietnam, India, etc.

Below, we would share with you the "far-before-the-fact predictions" that have been spreading in China recently (it should be noted that many of these “rumors” or "far-before-the-fact predictions", if you will, also reflect the popular will of the ordinary Chinese people who are tired of the disastrous "accomplishments" of Xi’s governance)：