Document Number 9 and China’s Ideological Cold War

Xi Jinping’s secret manifesto against ‘Western values’ still shapes the Party’s battle to preserve its grip on power.

In April 2013, the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) circulated a secret document to Party members entitled ‘Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere’. The ninth document issued by the General Office that year, this document has since come to be better known as Document Number 9.

Secret though this document was meant to be, it was soon posted online and then translated into English by the US-based Chinese language news outlet Mingjing Magazine and published in September of 2013. Initially there was some debate whether this document was genuine, whether it properly reflected the thinking of Xi Jinping and the leadership of the CCP or perhaps just a faction within the Party. But twelve years on there seems to be little doubt that Xi Jinping meant every word.

Xi Jinping and others in the CCP were fearful perhaps, and remain fearful to this day, that the loss of control by Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) back in 1991 that led quickly to the Soviet Union’s sudden collapse might well be replicated within China. Not to mention the more recent so-called colour revolutions that aimed to install Western-style democracies in some of those post-Soviet states – revolutions propelled by protesters and activist NGOs making powerful use of an unrestricted internet to ‘undermine’ incumbent authoritarian governments.

China’s unease with alien ideologies long predates the Communist era. In the late Qing dynasty, reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao sought to graft Western constitutionalism onto Confucian tradition, only to be crushed by conservative mandarins who feared the dynasty’s unravelling. The May Fourth Movement of 1919, when students demanded “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” was another episode where imported ideas threatened established authority. Document Number 9, in this sense, is heir to a centuries-old reflex of treating foreign philosophies not as enrichment but as existential contagion. 

So, what does Document Number 9 actually say? 

Essentially the document is a blueprint for the CCP’s defence against what it sees as ‘Western values’ – values that if left to take root in Chinese society could potentially lead to the CCP’s demise. 

Document Number 9 lays out seven political ‘perils’: the promotion of Western constitutional democracy; the promotion of ‘universal values’ (for example, democracy, human rights, freedom etc.); the promotion of ‘civil society’; the promotion of neoliberalism; the promotion of the West’s ideas of journalism; the promotion of historical nihilism (meaning that the only true history is that which is written by the CCP); and, finally, questioning Reform and Opening and the socialist nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics (which basically means questioning anything that China does). Document Number 9 instructs all Party members, especially those in government at any level, to pay close attention to the ‘ideological sphere’ and always to adhere to the CCP’s total control of the media. 

It seems strange in 2025 to look back on comments regarding the Internet made by former US president Bill Clinton, the late Nobel prize-winning Chinese dissident Liu Xiabo, and even the artist Ai Weiwei, for example, how each of them thought the Internet could not be controlled, that the Internet would finally bring freedom to China. Indeed, with the launch of Sina Weibo in 2009 – China’s equivalent of Twitter, as was – the prophecies made by people such as Bill Clinton, Liu Xiaobo, and Ai Weiwei seemed for a time to be coming true. Weibo brought an unprecedented opening-up of the public sphere in China, people utilising Weibo to criticize the Government (and therefore the CCP), tired of all the corruption and, as they saw it, bureaucratic incompetence. 

By 2012, the CCP had had enough. Censorship of the Internet in China – what has come to be known as the Great Firewall of China – had begun years before. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube had all been banned in China back in 2009. But now it was decided, that if the CCP was going to survive in power, it had to take full control if it was going to prevent any further encroachment of ‘Western values’ into China. This is the context in which Document Number 9 was drafted in secret in 2012 and then circulated to every Party member in April 2013 (the Internet explicitly mentioned in the document), leading to the CCP reasserting its control over all messaging and media, as well as every other aspect of civil society. 

Document Number 9 should not be seen as a watershed moment in Chinese politics – just CCP policy and intention made suddenly clear for all Party members to see. The reaction of Xi Jinping and the CCP to the new freedoms promised by the Internet and the encroachment of ‘Western values’ was years in the making. It had already begun under Xi Jinping’s predecessors. Some China watchers continue to point out the vulnerabilities of the CCP, that China’s internal contradictions and moments of public unrest – more common than might initially be imagined – must eventually bring about its demise. But the CCP doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Under Xi Jinping the crackdown on journalists, human rights lawyers, NGOs, and activists has been merciless – and very effective. And the strengthening of the CCP’s influence in local governments, the legal system, and the military continues apace to this day. The ideological Cold War is here to stay, Document Number 9 as relevant now as it was back in 2013. 

At the age of 71, the outspoken journalist Gao Yu was convicted in April 2015 of leaking state secrets (meaning Document Number 9) to foreign news media. She denied being the source of the leak – as did Mingjing Magazine. Document Number 9 had already been posted online at the time of the supposed leak. But Gao Yu had been a longtime critic of the CCP elite and despite her ill-health and advanced age – the elderly being usually venerated in China and often treated leniently under the law – the CCP took its chance to make an example of her. In November 2015 she suddenly confessed to the crime and expressed her regret. Her sentence was reduced to five years and she was allowed to spend her imprisonment in her own home.

The Party is in charge – and no one in China is allowed to forget it. 

(The author is a novelist and retired investigator with an abiding passion for Chinese history. Views personal.)