NOVEMBER 17, 2014 4:57 AM November 17, 2014 4:57 am
Students listening to a lecture at Sanya College, Hainan Province. A Liaoning Daily investigation concluded that many professors were not supportive enough of China’s political system.Credit Keith Bedford for The New York Times
A Chinese newspaper’s look into university professors’ criticism of China has triggered an online debate about academic freedom and whether scholars have a patriotic duty to refrain from making overly negative comments about the country, its society and its political system.
Liaoning Daily, a Communist Party-run newspaper in northeast China, published the article, “Teacher, Please Don’t Talk About China Like That: An Open Letter to Teachers of Philosophy and Social Science,” last week in response to a comment it received from a university student who complained about how “talking bad about China and cursing our society has become fashionable” in class. (The China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong’s journalism school has posted a translation of the main body of the article.)
The newspaper said its reporters sat through close to 100 classes at 20 schools in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang and Wuhan. While the report has many passages expressing respect for teachers and their role in society, it was strongly critical of instructors for not being sufficiently supportive of China’s political system, saying “the phenomenon of ‘being scornful of China’ definitely exists, and in some cases it’s quite excessive.”
The article criticized professors for holding a dismissive attitude toward socialist theory, comparing Mao with Chinese emperors, arguing in favor of Western-style political systems with separation of powers and questioning decisions of the Communist Party. “They one-sidedly exaggerate problems of corruption, social inequality, social management and other issues,” it added.
The article appears to have some degree of official support. It was published by the newspaper of Liaoning Province’s Communist Party provincial committee, and republished on national-level state media platforms, including the website of People’s Daily, the chief party newspaper. As President Xi Jinping has quickly consolidated his power, many fields in China have experienced a tightening of controls on expression and intensifying ideological rigor.
Last month, Mr. Xi told a group of prominent writers, actors and dancers that the arts should “disseminate contemporary Chinese values, embody traditional Chinese culture and reflect Chinese people’s aesthetic pursuit.” He singled out Zhou Xiaoping, a blogger known for his anti-Western essays, as a role model.
In academia, the dismissal last year of the economist and party critic Xia Yeliang from his post at Peking University triggered criticism that political imperatives were restricting scholars’ room to teach and research. The university said his dismissal had nothing to do with his opinions about the government and was solely the result of low academic standards.
The Liaoning Daily article inspired comments in support of the idea that scholars should curtail their negativity.
“College classrooms are a holy palace where young people shape their views of the world and their values, where the future of their thoughts and faith are illuminated,” said a commentary carried by the website of the China Youth Daily. “However, under the influence of negative emotions, it’s hard to imagine the young people today would have faith in our country and society or be optimistic about their own futures.”
But the article also triggered a response from scholars who said that this sort of ideological directive would only stifle thought. Sun Liping, a sociology professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, wrote that such restrictions would limit the basic ability of people to raise concerns about pressing social problems.
