Political outsiders are often amazed at how well the Communists Party manages to keep secrets. For example, Lin Biao was the No. 2 in the Party hierarchy when he fled the country and crashed in Mongolia in 1971. In the next two months, the great majority of Chinese still saw Lin as a top leader, and the official successor to Chair Mao Zedong, while the Party gradually rolled out the secret layer by layer in a top-down manner.
Now, two months after Wang Lijun, the then deputy mayor and former police chief, walked into the US Consulate in Chengdu, it seems the Party had been rolling out the information in an exact same manner. Many reported on the weibo that county-level officials, there are millions of them in China, were called out for close door meetings at night to be informed of the incident.
In a sense, it seems the party officials were still living in the era of 40 years ago, as some Netizens lamented on weibo. But what is truly amazing is that it seems the great majority of Chinese, party members or not, are still living in the era of 40 years ago, too. They are really good in keeping a secret, when they are told so by the Party.
