China’s propaganda ministry has an unlisted number
The Propaganda Department, or Publicity Department as it likes to call itself in English, shuns foreign journalists. It is not listed in public telephone directories. Yet it wields great power over the country’s media, culture and entertainment industries, deciding what can and cannot be reported, displayed, published, aired or performed.
We don’t know quite what to say about a Publicity Department that is so publicity-shy that its phone number is unlisted. Wait — oh, now we get it. It’s like that Jakov Smirnoff joke: “In USSR, TV watches you.”