Xi Jinping, David Cameron, and … Sergio Aguero. What the heck?

China’s president looks like a real human being. David Cameron looks like he has FOMO. Forget “selfie of the year,” which many have proclaimed. This is a Picture of the Year candidate, and it was taken by an Argentine footballer.

The backstory is that Xi Jinping is visiting Manchester as part of his UK tour, where he’ll talk about capital investments and direct flights from Beijing to Manchester. But who cares. Look at this!:

.@aguerosergiokun: “Thank you for the selfie, President Xi” 感谢能与您自拍，习主席！#CFAStateVisit pic.twitter.com/4du2zIaacY

— Manchester City FC (@MCFC) October 23, 2015

The Cheese Stands Alone: Welcome You to the Xi Jinping Phone App

Something for the weekend, sir? With Chinese cadres under official instruction to behave themselves for, perhaps, ever, the kind folks at Ccln.gov.cn, a website operated by the Central Communist Party School, have offered them a replacement entertainment to getting lobster-faced and curling up with a dead-eyed mistress.

The classics-quoting, picture-rich, cutting-edge “Learning China” app was launched yesterday, and is set to blow your mind – or your phone. Just three minutes after I opened the app, my two-year-old HTC had frozen up –  like its owner, it was obviously having a hard time processing all the fun.

I restart the phone. OK, here we go.

The app, according to Chen Jiancai, the Deputy Chief Editor of the tech-savvy Ccln.gov.cn – which supposedly stands for “Chinese Cadres Learning Network” – is based on the “Xi Jinping database” (huh?) and aims to present Xi Jinping’s important speeches since the 18th Party Congress, when he took over Zhongnanhai, through sections entitled “News, Live Map, Mini Courses, Knowledge Map, Xi Dada* Syllabus, Expert Interpretation, Select Commentary, Ebook, Theoretical Articles, Crucial Analysis, Quoted Poems and Xi Dada Anecdotes” (ooh).

“Everyone can find something that interests him or her,” says Chen. It’s a bold claim and therefore one Beijing Cream was keen to test. Let’s have a look, shall we?

In “Mini Courses,” you may watch 5-7-minute videos, each explaining one of the important political credos dreamt up and spat out since Xi’s big takeover, such as “Hong Kong-Shanghai Express,” “Bottom-Line Thinking” (aka, pessimism, fyi), “The Four Comprehensives,” “One Belt, One Road” etc.

The eBook section includes Xi’s latest masterpiece The Governance of China (for FREE), a collection edited by the People’s Daily editorial team of “classics quoted by Xi,” studying notes of Xi’s articles, Xi Zhongxun’s – Xi the Senior, or Xi Daddy – Anthology, which includes Xi Zhongxun in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, Xi Zhongxun in Changge, Xi Zhongxun in Guangdong, ad infinitum.

If, by any chance, you need to search for any speech made by Xi at any time and any place, you may go to the star feature of the app, “Live Map” – which is neither live, by the way, nor a map – and see the complete. footage. of it. Thus:

Sing it with Xi: We’re on the road… to rejuvenation… Altogether now!

In this cut, entitled “Xi Jinping attends Panda Garden opening ceremony with Belgian King,” you can see a series of bored white men standing in front of stereotypical Chinese buildings, with Xi Jinping and… a panda! A true bargain: Seen one, seen too much. (Actually, that panda one is a bit of a stand-out. Well worth a look.)

Our favorite tab, and sure to be yours, is obviously the “Xi Jinping Anecdotes.” It’s a combination of heart-warming stories about courage and hierarchy in the face of adversity – “Xi Told Underling to Buy Rubber Shoes for Flood Victim” – and Buzzfeed-style listicles (“15 Comments Foreign Leaders Made on Xi Jinping,” “10 Bits of Trivia That Show Xi’s Respect for the Elderly”) that try hard to make you regret clicking on them: the old clickbait-and-switch.

The app, unfortunately, isn’t available in Google Play yet, because Google notably gave CNNIC, who endorsed the app, a big and well-deserved screw-you just days ago for abusing the trust placed in it by the search engine to outsource its security certifications and thus allowing MITM attacks. 

Comments are already beginning to trickle in on the App Store, and it’s clear that someone is having a chuckle. One review claims to be from a thief who promptly returned the stolen phone after reading the app and seeing the error of his ways.

Another simply notes: “Under Boss Xi’s leadership I downloaded this app instantly when I saw it. It’s so impressive I’ve been brought to tears. Boss Xi’s footprints are all over the world and his speeches motivate the whole country. I must use this app everyday. Boss Xi is the guide and the light. Thank the author!”

It’s getting harder to separate wumao from parody these days

But you may download it directly, using an iPhone or just a phone. Personally I wouldn’t keep it for long on my phone, but that’s just me. The thing is definitely not riddled with spy and malware. 

*Quick Xi Jinping 101: Xi Dada is the cute nickname given to Xi by the propaganda department his adoring people. Means Uncle Xi, not Father Xi (that would be creepy).

Follow the author of this piece @valentinaluo

Our beloved China, the new social-political-economic butterfly on the scene, wowed at APEC before jetting off for the ASEAN East Asia Summit and the G20 Summit.

Hosting APEC for the first time since 2011, Beijing did things 大气, spending $6 billion on a lakeside campus, a new elevated expressway, and a no-costs-spared spectacular opening complete with fireworks. But how did they really do?

Silk Road: A Mod Look

The leader of the world’s largest economy kicked off the event with a bold statement, boasting a $40 billion price tag for the revival of an old classic: the Silk Road trade route. The fund’s goal is to “break the connectivity bottleneck” in Asia, focusing on connecting nations Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Tajikistan. The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will be set up as the major mechanism for funding infrastructure development. Oh, you got your own development bank now, huh? Xi, you so smoov.

Diplomacy + Drama = Dipl-o-rama!  

With 21 of the hottest Pacific Rim economies mingling to promote free trade and economic cooperation throughout the region, dangran there was a bit of drama! Analysts and amateurs alike gossiped over…

…bad boy Putin’s interaction with errbody. Hot topics included Russia’s invasion of Crimea, its poking at ailing eastern Ukraine, that time it shot down MH17… oh, and did you see Putin hitting on the missus, Lady Peng Liyuan?? Omg, I bet he was like, “here you can take my shirt, too.”

…APEC Blue: The color of this season. You gotta spend money to make money, and apparently you make money by turning the sky blue again for the economic giants of the world. For a costly hiatus, Beijing took half of the cars off local roads, closed more than 1,000 heavy industrial plants, and delayed central heating services in Tianjin.

…Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Xi Jinping breaking their “cold spell” of chilly diplomatic relations with a SUPER awkward handshake. #theresthebeef

…shirt-frontin’! With this type of posturing, why not flatter your figure(head) with a Star Trek-inspired tunic! Shiny yet understated, the APEC uniform even included a communicator-esque badge. I myself am thoroughly delighted that we’re evolving into The Next Generation.

Kinda a Big Deal in Asia

After the pomp and circumstance, the press junket did graduate to a body of bilateral negotiations. What was kinda a big deal?

ITA: a U.S.-Sino commitment to eliminating tariffs on such items as computers and computer software, telecommunication equipment and other advanced technology products.

Climate: a U.S.-Sino pact to reduce emissions, which emerged from seeming nothingness

Visas: a U.S.-Sino pact (seeing any patterns?) allowing Chinese visas for 10-year American tourists/businessmen and 5-year students. The application process for which I’m assuming is proportionately long, and will be subject to change NOW.

Putin’s not just keeping Xi’s wife warm – an agreement for 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas pipelined in from Western Siberian deposits to China should keep China toasty for 30 years.

FTAs, he-eeyy: South Korea and Australia are #winning. Tony Abbott is besides himself, apparent in a 30-second handshake during which it was unclear how much Xi Jinping was listening.

For more APEC goodies, read on! Links you’ll l-o-v-e <3:

- Tony Abbott shook hands with Xi FOREVER at APEC. You should know why.

- A throwback article to Xi’s call for a “regional security architecture” at CICA.

- Popup Chinese’s Sinica podcast, again with their finger on the pulse.

I love this GIF.

This was President Barack Obama’s reaction to Xi Jinping stonewalling New York Times reporter Mark Landler, and it captures — in two inches of movement, half a second, a tilt of an eyebrow — so many of our feelings about Chinese politics and journalism: yeah, it’s opaque and dreary and venal and debasing to common intellect, but what are ya gonna to do? Eh? Not like revolution has historically been any better, so best to leave em to their devices. Or as New York Times reported:

“The Chinese say, ‘let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off,’ ” Mr. Xi added, in a somewhat enigmatic phrase that was not immediately translated into English. It is normally interpreted as “the party which has created the problem should be the one to help resolve it.”

But man, that shrug — a shrug without budging the shoulder, a shrug that belongs on the Mount Rushmore of shrugs, a ladleful of amazing, pure poetry of body movement, what Chinese politicians can’t begin dreaming of attaining because that would require they sleep, because then we’d have evidence they were human beings, humans able to express basic bafflement, irony, lighthearted acquiescence – that shrug is a fucking mynx.

ABC News has a video of the above: basically, Xi Jinping’s central processor shutting down before our eyes as he removes his earpiece and turns toward the obsequious Chinese media while others in the press corps chuckle at his face with tactful viciousness.

Outside of all the obvious things we can say about this, I’ll humbly submit: it wasn’t even a hard question. Landler, possibly understanding he wouldn’t get a response anyway, asked about visas. Not censorship, Hong Kong, or human rights… just journalist visas, which was apropos considering the US just relaxed its visa policy (10-year visas now available to Chinese travelers).

But Xi – adhering to his weeklong, surely deliberate (and deliberated upon) strategy of staying as aloof as possible, like a 13-year-old hipster at a family picnic, way too cool for those gauche monkey bars – gave his best sulk-and-simper, mope-and-dope, and pressed his “system restart” button. You can easily envision the look without seeing it, how it begins in the eyes, the frumpy old ayi of his soul throwing close those windows and loudly latching them from the inside, muttering under her breath a curse of the self-imposed prison to which she owns the keys; how it spreads, like the widening radius of an infestation, into his brows and cheekbones, causing skin to sag with the weight of profound understanding and grievous regret that life exists and living things live; followed by, finally, a resigned acceptance that the adult world outside his magic fort abides by a set of conventions set through human concert, human strain and effort; oh what the crippled heart will never know; how our eye level can seem like a mountain’s peak to the quadriplegic. We know the look too well.

How fortunate, then, that the cameras focused on Obama, and that reaction, and that GIF. Goddamn I love it to bits.

Time has released its most recent edition of the Time 100, its click-baity list of “the most influential people in the world in 2014.” Among those on the list is — no surprise — Xi Jinping, who got a three-paragraph writeup from former US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman. The opening sentence should raise some eyebrows:

Xi Jinping has emerged as the most transformational Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping. His steady style exudes confidence while revealing little, capturing the attention of thought leaders worldwide.

That’s not exactly a compliment.

Xi is determined to break the sclerosis that threatens the ruling Communist Party’s grip on power, but he is relying on the politics of intimidation to do so.

The blurb ends with a requisite speculative non-speculation, since all pieces on the future of Chinese politics need to hedge:

While his preoccupation will be domestic harmony, the world will demand China’s participation at the table of decisionmakers. During his decade in office, Xi will become the first truly global leader to represent a country that for centuries has struggled with cohesion and unity. There is no middle path going forward — it will either be a failed effort, which would be catastrophic for the region, or a reformed Middle Kingdom that will become America’s greatest challenge and opportunity of the 21st century.

Xi wasn’t the only Chinese person to make Time’s list. Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, got a write-up from Arianna Huffington:

Soft-spoken, boyish, reclusive: the words come up repeatedly in descriptions of Pony Ma. But while the founder of Tencent — the Chinese online giant that combines gaming and e-commerce with the QQ and WeChat messaging services — may have a low-key manner, he’s also an undisputed rock star. At Internet conferences in China, young people mob him, trying to snap selfies. The company he co-founded in 1998 has grown to such heights that Ma’s name is routinely found on all the Chinese equivalents of the Time 100 list. But he hasn’t just built a successful business. In China’s unique cultural landscape — from its mobile-savvy population to its one-child families — he has tapped into something timeless and universal: a longing for connection.

And Jack Ma (no relation to Pony) was called the “king of Chinese e-commerce.” Writes Michael Schuman:

Now Ma, Alibaba’s executive chairman, is seeking to change China in a different way. Last year he devoted himself to cleaning up the nation’s infamous pollution as chairman of the Nature Conservancy’s China program. “The environmental situation is not something that can wait,” he has said. Hopefully he’ll tackle it as quickly as he has won customers.

Actress Yao Chen was profiled by Time’s very own Hannah Beech (though remind me when speaking out against pollution was considered bold?):

She has opined on everything from the effect on her young child of China’s poisoned environment — choking smog, foul water and a toxic food chain — to the brave stand of a Chinese newspaper battling state censors. Last year she even quoted Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.” Or perhaps one gulp of China’s polluted air.

Benedict Cumberbatch, star of Sherlock, though not Chinese, deserves a shout-out, because, you know, close enough. (He’s really popular here.)

Sometimes Tumblr is pretty amazing. #Politbros, everyone:

Here’s a GIF:

Amazing.

More China-related Tumblrs:

• Baidu Translate Fail (via)
• xi jinping looking at things
• How High Are Xi Jinping’s Pants Today?
• Wuluwu

(H/T Laura Fitch)

On Saturday, Chinese president Xi Jinping surprised diners of a neighborhood eatery in Beijing when he walked in and ordered a set meal that included steamed buns, some veggies, and a chitterlings. It was a modest lunch that cost 21 yuan, reports Global Times.

But what do we know about this place, Qing-Feng, located in Xicheng District? Photographers have been more or less flocking there to learn more, and Wall Street Journal has collected eight pictures in a slideshow. The above is from AP, with this caption:

Tourists from Guangdong province pose for photos at Qing-Feng. Political commentators said that while the event appeared to be unplanned, photos released on state media suggest that the drop-by was intended to portray the leadership as being in touch with common concerns.

The samples that follow show people posing with the “same meal” that Xi Jinping ordered. I suppose when you weren’t there to see the man in the flesh –

– this will have to do:

More samples, via Zuma Press, from Beijing’s newest most-popular restaurant:

And in case you missed it, the video:

Look at Xi Jinping eating lunch. When the story broke yesterday that the president of China was spotted in Beijing ordering steamed buns at a local restaurant called Qing-Feng, I noted that we’d be seeing more pictures, since if you can’t take pictures of the president of China on your camera phone, you might as well never take another camera phone picture again. Well, here’s a video, which surfaced on Youku about nine hours ago. It is wonderful in the following ways:

1. As we know, American politics favors extroverts: a politician in a neighborhood canteen might chat up everyone around him or her (“constituents”), pose with babies (even kiss them), create a ruckus; if not quite trying to stand out, certainly not shying away from attention. Chinese politics, of course, operates at the antipode of this civic dance. Watch as Xi Jinping professes his normality — and dignity — by ignoring the people who stand next to him and pose for pictures. This isn’t awkward. He’s just a man trying to eat, like us.

2. At the very start, someone (picture-taker?) says, “Can you see us?” Otherwise the only sounds are ambient conversations and utensils. But at the 17-second mark, someone behind the camera says, very clearly, “Napkins, waitress.” Someone else — presumably the waitress — replies, “Take it, take it.” I’m not entirely sure why this is notable, but maybe because it seems so in place, and, yes, normal. Xi Jinping is able to behave like a normal human being in a public setting, with neither purpose nor agenda. All other interpretations of this scene — whatever we want to make of it — that’s on us.

3. The people who stand next to him and pose for pictures. Particularly this woman, leaning in:

And this guy, so proud:

And this: is Xi Jinping possibly regarding the mashed-up husky-wildcat image on the dude’s shirt? (Note: could be a woman.)

4. On the back wall is a poster that confirms this restaurant is indeed Qing-Feng. The address, for those of you who might want to swing by:

Address：北京市新街口南大街178号 (178 Xinjiekou Nan Dajie)
Phone：010-66182812 or 010-66124087

Jen Haskell on Twitter recommends the Old Beijing breakfast place around the corner though.

5. Did you know Xi Jinping has a huge head? Yeah, you probably did.

UPDATE, 11:19 pm: Here’s another user video showing Xi Jinping actually interacting with people. Also, he really does wait in line!

Youku versions:

UPDATE, 12/30, 4:19 pm: Xi Jinping’s meal cost 21 yuan:

This certainly looks like Xi Jinping in a crowded Beijing restaurant. Weibo user @四海微传播 wrote at 1:20 pm today: “People, I’m not seeing this wrong, am I? Uncle Xi came to Qingfeng to eat steamed buns (baozi)!” The same user messaged again at 1:34 pm: “Uncle Xi queued to buy steamed buns, even paid his own bill, carried his tray, chose his own buns.”

The message was forwarded by none other than the official Xinhua Sina Weibo account at 1:38 pm.

Is this a set-up, in the same way that so many of these public-figure-deigns-to-walk-among-commoners episodes are? That is to say, was it pre-planned, with (undercover?) photographers lined up, with a clear motive? (At this point, we’re inclined to believe that really is Xi Jinping, not an impersonator — if state media is retweeting instead of actively censoring the story. This isn’t a repeat of the taxi incident in April, when Xinhua verified — then retracted — an always-apocryphal Xi-Jinping-took-a-taxi-by-himself story.)

If this isn’t a set-up — if Xi really did just pull a Gary-Locke-at-Starbucks — we have a lot more questions. What restaurant is he visiting? (UPDATE: Here’s the website for the restaurant referenced in the weibo, Qing-Feng Steamed Dumpling Shop, located at Xinjiekou.) Did he grow nostalgic for steamed buns — if so, what kind? — or are Zhongnanhai’s chefs just that poor? Did he really wait in line? For how long?

Below are two more pictures, via Sohu. Surely more will become available on the Internet, if those camera phones are any indication. Then again, we wonder how many of those plainclothes folks are from Xi’s entourage. (The tall dude in the center, surely.)

UPDATE, 12/29, 12:19 pm: A video has surfaced.

(H/T George Chen)

UPDATE, 12/30, 4:19 pm: Xi Jinping’s meal cost 21 yuan:

The Global Times has written the response to Thomas Friedman’s “Dear President of China” that none of us needed, asked for, or wants to see.

I was tempted to go through this line-by-line, but contrary to popular misconception, I have better things to do. Just know that “the West” or “the Western” is used eight times, including:

• “Their survival and influence in the West…”
• “…the West’s strategy in interfering China’s…” [sic]
• “Many storms the West created by the Interent…” [wtf?]

The story ends:

China should have its own judgment. The Western media will have an advantage in public discourse for a long time and would like to become a force that can influence China. But they will be challenged by our wisdom and determination.

I feel like we’re all victims of an elaborate office prank in which we return from lunch to find our desktop is now a stretched image of Thomas Friedman and the Global Times locked in unchaste concert, and we can’t do a damn thing about it without calling IT. My point is there are no winners.

China can’t cede agenda-setting to Western media (Global Times)

Proving that some good things really can exist on the Internet for months without being discovered, here’s a Tumblr called How High are Xi Jinping’s Pants Today?

The first post — and they’ve been sporadic ever since — was in June, but somehow we hadn’t encountered it until just this morning, thanks to That’s Online.

Like so, we have yet another way of tracking the movements of the general secretary of the Communist Party of China. And also a sartorial lesson in the proper height of pants — not so formal, and not so bureaucratic.

UPDATE:

https://twitter.com/SinoScoop/status/398299139097632768

Notice: if you misprint Xi Jinping’s name in a newspaper or magazine, the full hammer of official censure will fall upon your head.

China Digital Times has this from its ongoing Censorship Vault series, via Reports Without Borders:

Xiamen Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department: The West Strait Morning Post miswrote Xi Jinping’s name. Promptly pull all current papers from the shelves. Editors involved [in this mistake] must be severely published and undergo self-criticism. (June 27, 2013)

Copyeditors: go into your office and ask for a raise, pronto.

As reported last month, former security chief Zhou Yongkang, now retired, has been the target of high-level corruption probes since at least late August. “How far and high is [Xi Jinping] willing to go to clean up China’s political elite?” the New York Times’s Chris Buckley asked in a September 25 article.

Now we kind of know. The South China Morning Post reported today, citing unnamed sources, that Xi Jinping is overseeing a “special unit” to investigate Zhou, “bypassing the Communist Party’s internal disciplinary apparatus.”

Beijing police chief Fu Zhenghua will report directly to Xi, according to police and graft watchdog sources. Fu is the first person in the party’s history to also hold the concurrent posts of head of Beijing’s armed police, the Standing Committee member of the party’s Beijing municipal committee and deputy minister of public security.

This news was partially confirmed by none other than CCTV News’s Twitter account at around 5:30 pm.

RT @cctvnews: President Xi Jinping has set up a special unit to investigate corruption allegations against the retired leader Zhou Yongkang.

— tania branigan (@taniabranigan) October 21, 2013

And then, predictably, it was unconfirmed, as the tweet was deleted — just as Western journalists were spitting out Coca-Colas* en masse onto their keyboards.

Now you see it, now you don't: @cctvnews has deleted Zhou tweet

— tania branigan (@taniabranigan) October 21, 2013

*We figure 5:30 is pretty late for coffee or tea.

“Why deletion?” is probably the less interesting of the two questions we can ask. There seem to be many good ways to break a story about an unprecedented investigative unit for a former Chinese leader who happened to be of the most powerful and divisive figures on the Politburo Standing Committee; Twitter is not one of them.

How did the tweet ever get sent?

So @cctvnews has deleted and de-confirmed the tweet on Zhou Yongkang being investigated. Was the tweet the mistake of an intern?

— Jeremy Goldkorn 金玉米 (@goldkorn) October 21, 2013

What if @cctvnews was tweeting the Zhou Yongkang info from a 内参?

— Edward Wong (@comradewong) October 21, 2013

(内参 refers to internal — and confidential — government documents.)

It’s unlikely we’ll find out. But this seems like a reasonable bet:

Safe prediction: @cctvnews will be the most aggressively boring twitter account for the foreseeable future.

— Gady Epstein (@gadyepstein) October 21, 2013

Although you should probably start following the Twitter accounts of state media anyway, just in case. There must be a whole bunch of interns there, always a click away from making news.

(Above image via George Chen)

UDPATE, 10/22, 10:09 am: CCTV News says it was “targeted.”

CCTVNEWS Statement pic.twitter.com/B0iinrjXvt

— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) October 22, 2013

Is there any need for Xi Jinping, the president of China, to have an Instagram account?

Signs say no, but as recently discovered by Commentary Made in China, here is @XiJinpingOfficial, an Instagram account that sure looks a lot like something a person from Xi Jinping’s office would manage.

Starting from the first image on March 19, the account has done nothing but post pictures of the Chinese president’s meetings and events, plus some from his younger days. Some of these photos you’ve seen before, and look like they’ve been pulled from the wires. Others deserve a second look:

But why would anyone do this? Spend six months documenting the Xi Jinping’s moves, I mean. A sly and politically aware hipster in the US? A Chinese citizen with experience studying abroad? Someone within a branch of the Chinese government, albeit lower down the ladder? Which poor foreign copyeditor in charge of the Xinhua or CCTV twitter account is also being instructed to publicize Xi’s photos? How deep is the CCP’s social media reach? If we search, could we find the Chinese government’s fingerprints on Grindr?

Of course, all this is not without precedence. Who can forget the collective disappointment accompanying the revelation that the Sina Weibo account “Study Xi Fan Club” was in fact run by an ordinary microblogger, and not one of Xi’s aides?

But perhaps the most convincing reason that this account is fake: the comments. The negative comments. Why would the Chinese president open himself and his office to this sort of unchecked criticism? As Beijing Whisper notes:

Interestingly, although Instagram allows the user to delete unwanted messages, you can still find some comments that would be censored on other social networking platforms.

COUNTERPOINT: he (the person who runs the account, possibly associated with Xi) loves hashtagging, to the extent that only a public relations officer could. And #nofilter is never used. There is, in fact, no sign of irony anywhere.

The very first post was #xijinping #instachina #china #chinse #prc #cn. However more recently, Xi seems to copy & paste Xinhua’s reporting of his trip when posting.

Alas, there is hope for this account’s veracity. As of this writing, @XiJinpingOfficial has 60 posts, 17,105 followers, and is following 16 — among which are Barack Obama, Dmitry Medvedev, National Geographic, Time, and NBC News.

Xi Jinping joins Instagram (Beijing Whisper)

How many of these tatted, gangster Chinese leaders can you identify? Five of them seem pretty obvious to me. The others?

Scroll down below for my answers, after I tell you that Redditors are having a fun little caption contest with this, which you should join. (Thanks to Tom Carter for posting the above via Sina Weibo user @毒醉紅塵.)

Also:

By the way, Brazzers is a porn site not blocked in China.

Left to right: Wen Jiabao, Mao Zedong, Li Peng, Deng Xiaoping (middle), Xi Jinping (very front), Jiang Zemin, Hu Yaobang. Two in the very back row are obscured by shadow, but one of them could almost be Barack Obama. Who should they be?