The making of a Zhao Qizheng speech
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-05-16 05:21

There is a website in China that offers templates for public speeches for all kinds of occasion. The speaker, presumably an official, needs only to plug in the name and date of the event and the names of VIPs present, and voila, a speech is ready, complete with layers and layers of cliches and platitudes.

The making of a Zhao Qizheng speech is the opposite of this assembly-line approach. According to Yang Yang, an official at SCIO, Zhao is very serious about the preparation of his public speeches.

In one of the accompanying pieces in the book "Explaining China to the World," Yang describes the typical process of the birth of a Zhao speech.

When accepting an invitation to make a speech, Zhao always asks for information like who the audience will be, and how long the time allocated for his speech is. He makes sure he does not talk down or up to an audience, but imparts the kind of knowledge and insight that a specific audience will take an interest in.

With the audience in mind, Zhao starts to research the topic. He leaves no stone unturned in doing so. For example, for his 2004 speeches in Argentina and Brazil, he first sent someone to buy up all the books on the two nations, then asked the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Culture and the General Administration of Press and Publication for the latest updates. He browses through the mountain of materials, taking copious notes and marking those words, figures and analogies that might be relevant to his speech. "He rarely asks others to do this for him," reveals Yang, "because he jokes that it is a great way to collect books."

Then, Zhao would work on the outline. Like a veteran journalist, he believes that a great lead is the best way to capture the audience's attention. For the Argentina speech, he found in a book that Buenos Aires sits opposite Beijing on the globe, a fact that conjures up the image of digging a tunnel through the earth and bringing people closer. For the speech in Brazil, he learned from a history book that Chinese tea farmers took tea to Brazil as early as in 1810 and tried planting tea in the southern hemisphere. Details like these add an instant rapport with the target audience.

From this attention-grabbing opening, the speech flows naturally, from history to current affairs, from culture to trade. Zhao selects his examples with care and finesse, making sure that the ones he employs will resonate with the audience. He cites popular ones such as sports celebrities and film stars, but also philosophers and politicians, who may have a far-reaching impact.

Zhao Qizheng likes to dictate his speeches for the first draft. With a detailed outline in hand, he fine-tunes the rhythm and spontaneity of a speech, thus eschewing the style of a written article and picking up new ways of saying things that a speaker can only say when inspired.

This book includes several examples that Zhao gave up at the last minute in favour of completely impromptu remarks. Even though he had customized his words for the occasions, he felt that the speeches could not fully relate to what other speakers had just said. So, he chose the ultimate way of customization: speaking extemporaneously.

(China Daily 05/16/2005 page3)