Pure conversation

In "Annals of literary vs. vernacular, part 2" (9/4/16), we saw how Chairman Xi badly bungled a literary quotation.  Now we find that, in the same speech, the Chairman may be said to have misinterpreted a literary term, qīngtán 清谈 ("pure conversation").

On the Btime news website, there's an article titled "Xí zhǔxí suǒ shuō de 'qīngtán guǎn' shì shénme 习主席所说的'清谈馆'是什么?" ("What is the 'Pure conversation salon' that Chairman Xi spoke of?") (9/5/16) in which it is explained that, by qīngtán 清谈, Chairman Xi essentially meant "empty talk" (kōngtán 空谈).

Here's the sentence in which he used this term:

Wǒmen yīnggāi ràng èrshí guó jítuán chéngwéi xíngdòng duì, ér bùshì qīngtán guǎn 我们应该让二十国集团成为行动队, 而不是清谈馆 ("We should let the Group of Twenty become a team for action, and not a salon for pure conversation").

Qīngtán 清谈 ("pure conversation") was part of a philosophical movement of the 3rd-6th centuries called xuánxué 玄学 ("abstruse learning"), which "combined elements of Confucianism and Taoism to reinterpret the Yijing, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi." (from Wikipedia)  While Communist theoreticians may not agree with their topics and goals, the deliberations of the pure conversationalists were far from "empty".  To Communist ideologues, perhaps one of the most distasteful aspects of xuánxué 玄学 ("abstruse learning") is that its adherents held themselves aloof from politics.