Xinhua reported that in his speech to a training session for young leaders at the Central Party School on September 3, Chinese President and CCP CC General Secretary Xi Jinping spoke of the immense challenges facing the country and the Chinese Communist Party. Xinhua specifically noted his use of the term “struggle,” or douzheng (斗争). The China Media Project explained that douzheng (斗争) is a word that bears the weight of a painful political history — recalling the internal “struggles against the enemy” that tore Chinese society apart in the 1960s and 1970s. It said for many still, douzheng invokes not just the need for unity toward common goals, or a can-do attitude, but warns instead of deep and potentially traumatizing division. It said when a senior Chinese leader invokes the language of “struggle” in a contemporary context, understanding that the choice of discourse at the upper levels of the Chinese Communist Party is rarely ever incidental, and never, ever casual. While Xi Jinping's use of the word "struggle" (douzheng (斗争) could refer to the economic slowdown and the US-China Trade War, it is probable that Xi Jinping is referring also to opposition or his struggles within the Party. The history of the Party reveals that talk of “struggle” at the official level has often served as a warning to those who might act at cross purposes to those in power, or who might mount criticism or opposition. The China Media Project said a number of sources have noted in recent days, this recent speech was “Xi Jinping’s first systematic exposition of the notion of ‘great struggle.’” In fact, though, Xi Jinping is the only leader in the reform era to ever to have offered a “systematic exposition” of the notion of “great struggle” — and that in itself is significant. It said based on its search of the People's Daily, it found that "no previous top leader since the arrest and trial against the Gang of Four and the start of the reform and opening policy in 1978-1979 has used the phrase “great struggle” consistently to denote either external challenges or internal divisions.
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