Originally published on the CGS blog on February 27, 2015.
Although China does allow slightly more freedom of speech than North Korea, ever since Xi Jinping became President in 2013, the country has been cracking down on speech and expression deemed subversive in its higher academic institutions.
President Xi has been pushing universities to espouse the views of Maoism and to get back on the socialist track, especially since he’s been courting conservative members of the Communist Party. In September 2014, a prominent Party journal stated that top-ranking Peking University appealed to its faculty and student body to “fight criticism of the party.” The Party is afraid that if it loosens too much of its grip, the country could descend into territorial breakup and mass disorder.
Professor Xia Yeliang, an economics professor at Peking University, was let go from his job in 2013. He’s an advocate of greater freedom of speech. The Chinese government also has imprisoned Liu Xiaobo, a human rights activist who started a petition to reinstate Xia at his job. During the same year, law Professor Zhang Xuezhong, who worked at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, was fired after publishing articles that defended rights guaranteed under China’s Constitution.
To weed out professors not toeing the Party line, China relies on students to report them. Most of these students, who come from China’s politically conservative middle class, are supportive of the Party because of how they and their families have benefitted from China’s current economic and political policies. They often don’t have many incentives to challenge the status quo, so the Party can rely on them to snuff out professors calling for change.
China also has been targeting outspoken critics who want better inter-ethnic group relations. For example, Professor Ilham Tohti, who’s been calling for peaceful coexistence between Hans and Uighurs in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for supposedly calling for separatism. During his trial, Tohti’s lawyers couldn’t defend him properly for fear that they would become victims of persecution as well.
However, allowing people to engage in peaceful dialogue on outstanding grievances and building inter-ethnic stability would reduce the chance for mass chaos in the first place and promote social harmony. Suppressing grievances only allows them to simmer until they explode, which often happens after a regime changes (as what happened in the Balkans after Josip Tito passed away).
China needs to allow people like Professor Ilham Tohti to engage in peaceful dialogue and activism to alleviate grievances among oppressed people in China instead of falsely accusing them of fomenting terrorism.
Finally, China will not be able to resolve outstanding social issues or maintain a socially harmonious society by suppressing dissent in the long run, especially by firing and/or imprisoning academic professionals who want to shine the light on injustice or promote sociopolitical human rights.
