On February 9, the New York Times published an article, titled “China Tells Schools to Suppress Western Ideas.” The article cites the theory of the China’s education minister that the pervasiveness of Western ideas in Chinese universities threatens the CCP’s leadership and destabilizes Chinese society. That thinking has come in for criticism from scholars who are concerned about China’s academic liberty and freedom of speech and publication. This follows the shutdown in January of 133 accounts on WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging service, that were believed to be “exposing CCP’s truth” and “distorting CCP’s history.” Last year, Google scholar, Gmail, and LINE were banned in China. Instagram was immediately blocked on the mainland after the “Occupy Central” protest took place in Hong Kong. Censorship in China has intensified since Xi Jinping took the office in 2012.
Five days before the Times’ article, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor in the Department of History at the University of California Irvine, provided a different perspective at a Columbia University public lecture. He argued that the space to talk about politics in China was expanding. Wasserstrom compared China to pre-1991 Soviet Union, maintaining that one was unlikely to find George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in a Soviet bookstore during that time. These two dystopian political writings describe people’s life under the control of totalitarianism and authoritative-hedonism. Wasserstrom suggests that contemporary China has more in common with the setting of Brave New World than that of 1984; rulers control people in a less arduous way, by appealing to people’s senses of pleasure and desire, albeit in an authoritarian culture.
Certainly, there is more political discussion among Chinese nationals. A peasant in Tianjin may attack a forced eviction by the local government with anger and tears. A migrant worker who drives a taxi in Shanghai might complain about the inequality of wealth and income distribution. However, one is not likely to read harsh criticisms of the CCP or the central government on Weibo.com, China’s version of Twitter, or WeChat. Together, registered accounts on these two services equal half the Chinese population. The CCP apparently believes that publishing allegories and analogies is tolerable; critical speech that poses a direct challenge to the regime will, however, be banned.
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