Thread by @jinpeili

CCTV FOLLIES 1.06 Bowing to the leader
-Foreign diplomats granted an audience Xi start bowing spontaneously
-Looking for the new Lei Feng
-Covid gets a name change
-CCTV advertises itself
-Russian missiles flare
-Major US self-own with pitiful congress spectacle

Another VIP arrival, another gala Great Hall reception

Xi passively dominates the first ten minutes of the news, mostly posing for cameras and being bowed to.

The president of Turkmenistan,
Serdar Berdimuhamedow, is in town.

The highlight in CCTV's ten-minute coverage of the Great Hall meeting is the little diorama showing plastic camels traversing endless desert sands surrounded by realistic cacti and colorful flowers.

As for the rocky real estate market, it's all good.
Keep on moving, nothing to see here.
Key word is "confidence."
Here the minister intones the word "confidence" 3X in one sentence.

And now a report from chilly Shenyang...

Workers must endure frigid temperatures to clear train tunnels of ice. Luckily they have discovered that young workers are good at this kind of work, as this hapless model youth who will miss New Year with his family has wistfully discovered.

The work of cleaning frozen drainage tunnels is not for the fussy or the claustrophobic. Sometimes a bare hand will do the job.

The work is arduous but the train must go on and one's breast surges with pride to see it do so.

Special Job Announcement:
The Communist Party Propaganda Department is accepting applications for a new generation of self-sacrificing Lei Feng heroes.

"Covid protocol, jointly issued by the National Health Commission and the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, changed the Chinese term for COVID-19 from "novel coronavirus pneumonia" to "novel coronavirus infection.

Change the name, change the game.

CCTV has entered the era of peak TV! A new TV series guaranteed to enlighten and entertain. It's called "Go On, Go Blow Your Own Horn" (rough translation) and it's full of surprises.
You'll never guess which political party it's tooting about.

Move over Netflix! CCTV can do series, too. No longer just one long boring episode, but four of them!
Fire up the popcorn. Assemble the family. Be ready to take notes.

Here, a sneak preview as the red flag and yellow sickle are slowly revealed in a zoom-out shot that is artfully framed by green tree cover,

Happy New Year from a nursery school!
(best thing on the news so far)

Marcos Jr gets grilled on CCTV's "Leaders Talk"

Time for another CCTV installment of "Something Special" (TM)
A Russian report on Russia's special military operation.

I'm not sure what CCTV viewers get out of this sordid show and I'm not sure CCTV knows the answer, either.
Seems like they struck a dumb deal with the Kremlin.

The Kremlin brings attention Russian firepower while railing against the US for fanning flames incessant and threatening innocent Russia.

File footage of a Bradley tank is shown below to "illustrate" the point, whatever the point is.

A French financial expert says it's all the fault of US and NATO.
(oh, that's a new one)
A broken window of unknown provenance.
The voice-over explains that Ukraine ends up doing the suffering while the US benefits.

Indeed all of Europe is suffering, but nowhere more than the UK which supports the US to the hilt.
They've got an ongoing train strike to contend with now!

CCTV's bored London TV crew likes train-spotting.
Their vox populi interviews reveal that inflation is going through the roof. The woman on the right sighs, saying she doesn't know what the solution is.

But CCTV knows.
Europe's woes can all be traced to those nefarious US sanctions on Russia.
It's so unfair!

And China has skin in the game. The high cost of oil is weakening Europe as an export market to mop up excess Chinese goods.

When CCTV's hallmark "bad news from a bad country" (TM) segment rolls around, a single picture of the US Congress is worth a thousand words.

But CCTV adds some words anyway.

Thank you for watching. Tune in again.