No waiting, no watching, no slacking.
不等待，不观望，不懈怠。
Xi Jinping’s directive to cadres, officials, scientists, engineers, and business leaders at the inaugural Digital China Summit on April 22, 2018, was anything but subtle. The slogan blazed across the main display board, reinforcing the urgency behind his vision for Digital China.
Xi Jinping’s push for Digital China is more than a policy initiative; it is a form of political doctrine. Doctrine in China’s Leninist system requires loyalty, repetition, and above all action. Ideological alignment is proven through implementation.
If you’re a Communist Party member, you’ve likely endured countless study sessions emphasizing one central idea: without Xi Jinping, there would be no roadmap for China to win the Fourth Industrial Revolution, no strategy to counter Western dominance in the digital era, and no coherent vision for Digital China. More personally, you are expected to internalize that it was Xi Jinping’s “guts and courage” over two decades that turned his vision to “Build Digital China” into a national priority.
In short, the Party message is clear: Digital China is Xi Jinping’s path to win the future. Now it is the Party’s path, every cadre’s path, and if you want to be seen as a loyal contributor, your path too. So get on board. “No waiting, no watching, no slacking.”
How the Party constructed Xi’s digital legacy
When Digital China was elevated to a national strategy in 2017, Party cadre and government officials were educated on three points highlighting Xi Jinping’s “remarkable determination and extraordinary skill” as a Marxist theorist. First, only a “statesman and strategist” with the “foresight, forward thinking, and long-term planning” of an individual like Xi Jinping could have developed a plan so “visionary.” Second, Xi’s most remarkable achievement as a master theoretician was the development of a new Marxist theorem “combining” informatization and modernization into a roadmap for National Rejuvenation and as predictive path for China to “win the future.” Third, it was only with “guts and courage” that then Governor Xi Jinping was able to drive informatization in Fujian province, when few others understood it. No less was expected in 2017 from all cadre and officials to drive Digital China.
The message, then and now, was the same: “No waiting, no watching, no slacking.”
Why the propaganda campaign was so intense
This framing was not incidental. A broad propaganda campaign launched in late 2017 worked to cement Xi’s personal authorship of the Digital China vision. The campaign’s intensity stood out. Most ideological rollouts are briefer, but this one spanned months and reached deeply into the state apparatus.
Why such force was deemed necessary remains unclear. While Digital China was only formalized as a national strategy during Xi’s second term, he had already introduced the idea in a keynote speech at the Second World Internet Conference in Wuzhen in December 2015. This timing suggests at least some internal hesitation or resistance to the concept.
Was there pushback within the leadership? Possibly, and the evidence points that way. Unlike the earlier Cyber Great Power strategy, which rose with clear signs of broad consensus, Digital China’s ascent appears more closely tied to Xi personally. That distinction matters. It hints at differing political foundations between China’s three elite digital strategies and helps explain why Digital China required such heavy ideological scaffolding.
For anyone trying to understand China’s long-term digital intent, this nuance is critical.
The 2018 breakthrough: Digital Fujian, Digital China, and Xi at the center
The propaganda campaign reached its domestic media breakthrough at the 2018 Digital China Summit. On April 23, the Guangming Daily, a top-tier Party outlet, ran a front-page story titled: “Digital Fujian is the Ideological Origin of Digital China.” The headline was not symbolic. It served to elevate Xi’s personal role and clarify the relationship between Digital China and the two other elite digital strategies, Cyber Great Power and Smart Society. Each of the three ideological themes, Xi as visionary strategist, master Marxist theoretician, and courageous leader, were reinforced in the article.
By this point, Cyber Great Power had already been part of the Party lexicon for over four years. But at the Summit, and through the Guangming Daily article, Xi used his “Important Thought” on Cyber Great Power to articulate, for the first time since the 19th Party Congress political report, the cascading structure of the Party’s three elite digital strategies: Cyber Great Power, Digital China, and Smart Society.
Digital China as political doctrine
Xi’s push for Digital China is more than a policy initiative; it is a form of political doctrine. Doctrine in China’s Leninist system requires loyalty, repetition, and above all action. Ideological alignment is proven through implementation.
That is the purpose of the slogan. A command, not encouragement. No waiting. No watching. No slacking.