Political action and political thinking ("ideology") provide the twin sets of data on which most conventional analyses of the Chinese Communist Party's transformation are made to rest. The 21st century's unprecedented concern with information and communication technologies has underscored, however, the need for analysts to upgrade the relevance of political language to any actionable appreciation of an untidy present and forecasting of a potentially turbulent future. A study that focuses on how language and state officialdom intersect in the areas of propaganda and nationalities/ethnic affairs is reported here. A theoretical analysis of written primary sources and first-hand ethnographic data make plain that unless language-in-use is factored into analyses of China's past and present, even the most judicious conjecture concerning What May Happen Next? may well be fatally skewed.