Why Make Them Take Notes by Hand?

The other day on Twitter I saw a clip from CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo evening news: Xi Jinping sat centered, delivering a speech, while Politburo Standing Committee members and Politburo members sat to either side, every one of them respectfully writing notes with a pen in a small notebook.

I have seen this kind of scene many times now. But it is only something that has appeared in the years since Xi Jinping came to power. There was nothing like this under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, or Hu Jintao, and even in Xi's earliest days in power this scene did not exist. Yet this is by no means Xi's own invention — he learned it from North Korea's Kim Jong Un. In news footage out of North Korea we often see the same scene: whether indoors or outdoors, whether Kim Jong Un is sitting or standing, the moment he begins to speak, the civil and military officials around him hastily pull out their notebooks and pick up their pens to write.

Watching this scene, I find it utterly absurd. What era are we in, that people still have to take notes by hand? In an age when electronic recording is so widespread and convenient, why demand that everyone revert to the manual age of pen and paper? Taking notes by hand on the spot is easy to get wrong and easy to miss things — so why not simply record it? Everyone present is a senior leader — don't they have secretaries? Couldn't they just record the audio on the spot and have a secretary transcribe it afterward? This is especially true for the Party Central Committee, which lacks neither money nor manpower — it could easily record the speech on-site, then compile and print it for distribution to everyone. Why not do that? Under Mao, and under Deng, Jiang, and Hu, the authorities did exactly that — so why, in the Xi Jinping era, must people go back to taking notes by hand? There must be a reason, a deliberate calculation, behind this.

When Xi Jinping speaks and the officials on either side bow their heads to take notes, it makes for a striking image — and that image is exactly what Xi wants. What this picture conveys is that Xi Jinping is a heaven-sent genius whose every golden word is truth itself, and that his civil and military ministers are utterly convinced, boundlessly devoted, and boundlessly worshipful. If even Politburo Standing Committee members — officials of such enormous rank — are this deferential and this awestruck before Xi, how could anyone else dare show anything less than total submission? When U.S. President Biden once called Xi Jinping a "dictator," the CCP fiercely protested. But in fact, this very image — Xi speaking while Politburo Standing Committee members and Politburo members bow their heads to take notes — is the best possible illustration of exactly what the word "dictator" means.

Beyond expressing worship of and submission to the leader, this scene carries other political implications as well.

First, since you were not instructed to relay it, you may not tell anyone else. Second, once the leader has issued an instruction, you must grasp the leader's intent and act according to it. Third, if the matter turns out well, credit naturally goes to the leader — proof of his brilliance. Fourth, if the matter is bungled while following the leader's instructions, you cannot blame the leader for it, because his instructions were never put down in black and white nor recorded — your notes are merely your own personal writing and carry no evidentiary weight. If things go wrong, you alone are to blame; the leader bears no responsibility. All credit goes to the leader; all blame goes to someone else. The leader claims every success and shoulders no failure.

To be sure, we know that after the leader delivers a speech, the Central Committee often issues an official document or summary of the remarks afterward. But such printed documents or summaries are usually polished so that key statements become vaguer and more equivocal, making it easier for the leader to evade responsibility later. In the moment, the leader's actual remarks are likely to be fairly blunt and direct — if they weren't, the people below wouldn't understand his meaning. But if the remarks are too direct, it becomes hard to dodge responsibility for them afterward. Hence the arrangement made by the Central Committee: on one hand, everyone must take handwritten notes on the spot, grasping the leadership's intent as faithfully as possible in the moment; on the other hand, the leader's remarks are later compiled into carefully polished text and distributed as official documents or summaries. Because the printed documents or summaries have been meticulously refined, it becomes easier for the leader to deny responsibility, while your on-the-spot notes, being purely your own record, count for nothing as evidence. With no official written record and no audio or video recording, outsiders and future generations have no way of seeing through the trickery behind it all.

Through this single image, we can come to understand exactly how authoritarian dictatorship operates.