Party-speak refers to speech typical of the political party, in this case the Chinese Communist Party. The sense is of a language full of rigid and ritualistic formulations and the apologies were just a formality. [The Arithmetic of Party-Speak][1]: > - The 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is just around the corner — and that means the machine of political discourse is humming away at high speed. Here ***[speak][2]*** is used as a suffix meaning: > (informal mainly disapproving) used to form nouns to mean the special language used in a particular subject area or business: > - computer-speak > - marketing-speak (Cambridge Dictionary) [1]: https://medium.com/@cmphku/the-arithmetic-of-party-speak-c52debdd41db [2]: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/speak