Political loyalty is even more of a refrain for the Xi administration than its predecessors. With the crucial 20th National Party Congress mere weeks away, the credo of boundless 'absolute' loyalty was by October 2022 aired at ever larger mass performances. Some sceptics invoke Confucian tradition, for which loyalty was ideally to a set of institutions, not to individual rulers. The illustration, which is recent, recalls the stiff, militaristic poses that symbolised loyalty to the Party in the early years of the PRC.