China's Standing Committee members are continuing to work the storm-hit masses. One has to admire propaganda chief Li Changchun (B). Here's a man who doesn't just direct from on high, but who takes a real hands-on approach to his portfolio:

 

That's a lot of happy people in the snow with cabbages (Imagethief will accept all suggestions for captions). Li was also spotted chatting up strandees (yeah, I know it's not a word) in one of Wuhan's railway stations. From the China Daily (but also appearing on Xinhua and probably everywhere else, for obvious reasons). Also spotted on the road recently, Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao and Li Keqiang.

Good for them. They can't be doing any worse than George "Heckuvajob, Brownie" Bush.

In fact the current crisis has been a golden opportunity to dust off some classic propaganda imagery, such as this shot from the front page of today's People's Daily of Zhejiang militia members shoveling snow with a conveniently placed banner:

 

I can't quite make out the characters, but I'm sure it's inspirational. 

Update:

In my previous post on the storm I briefly noted Wen Jiabao's role as the bridge to the people. On that point, but in somewhat more depth, spare a moment for Telegraph journalist Richard Spencer's thoughtful take on Wen as the "good official" of Chinese lore:

 

When [Wen Jiabao] spends new year's eve down a mine eating dumplings with the workers, as he did just before taking office, he is doing something different from a western politician in the same situation. He is linking, it seems to me, a traditional Chinese narrative of the "good official", via the Communist narrative of "Serve the People", to the democratic socialist instinct that it is the government's responsibility to make everything right (as opposed to the liberal view that it is the government's task to provide a framework in which the individual can make things better).

***

The good official is a constant theme of history, storytelling and even Peking Opera: he tries to intervene with the cruel emperor on behalf of the common people, but all too often is not heeded. The result is one of the few traits you come across in China which I do believe makes the country exceptional, as opposed to all the other ways in which Chinese people react pretty much identically to everyone else, whatever people will have you think.

This is the view that life is cruel, that most rulers will not do anything about it, and that all that can be hoped for is that they won't make things too much worse. The best - the very best - thing that can happen is that a "good official" can come along and make the emperor see the truth about their plight, in which case something good may at last come of things.

 Worth a read.