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A decade ago, the brilliant Chinese writer Yu Hua penned a collection of essays titled China in Ten Words. By turns caustic, funny, and tragic, the book was a pithy commentary on modern China’s travails but also some of its triumphs. Some of Yu’s chosen words came to my mind upon hearing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chairman Xi Jinping’s speech last month to celebrate the CCP’s centennial founding. Specifically, the words: leader (lingxiu), revolution (geming), copycat (shanzhai), disparity (chaju), and bamboozle (huyou). These words underlined that what was interesting in Xi’s speech was not what he said, but what he did not say.