China's academics being `mentally illed'
IF YOU CAN CONTROL HOW PEOPLE THINK, IT THEN BECOMES EASIER TO CONTROL HOW PEOPLE BEHAVE. Teachers censored, detained
Teachers and university professors in China are being censored, silenced, detained and sent to mental hospitals amid warnings the country is on the cusp of a second Cultural Revolution.
One pregnant school teacher was recently forced to check into a psychiatric hospital because she challenged official accounts of historical events.
Last week, a law professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University was censored after posting an essay critiquing the state's draconian COVID restrictions and the increasingly blurred line about what can and cannot be said.
“My confusion manifests itself first in that where any social issue is concerned, I no longer have any idea where the line for speech is,” Lao Dongyan wrote on the Wechat social media app.
Jiang Xueqin, a Chengdu-based education consultant, said: “Everything is moving toward a second Cultural Revolution,” referring to the 1966-76 period when Mao Zedong stoked class struggles and encouraged the masses to “purge” the country of scholars and intellectuals. Up to two million people are thought to have died in the resulting violence and chaos.
Li Tiantian, the pregnant school teacher, posted a cry for help on social media, saying authorities were committing her to fix her “mental problems,” a common state tactic known as being “mentally illed,” and that she was worried for her unborn child.
It prompted an outpouring of concern online, forcing local government officials to insist Li had been admitted for her own safety, adding: “As for her issuing inappropriate statements, after she leaves hospital, she will undergo education and counselling in line with the laws and regulations.”
Li, a poet and essayist who taught in a rural part of Hunan province, resurfaced again late last month and posted an essay, quickly erased from China's internet, in which she said she had moved to another part of the country.
“Physically and emotionally exhausted, I think only of escape! Forgive me for not having the fortitude to go on — I'm simply too battered and bruised,” she wrote.
Li's case struck a chord nationwide, but it has also worried experts who see it as part of a growing sign that, just as under the late dictator Mao, academic inquiry and debate are being criminalized in China.
Jiang pointed to Chinese universities being repurposed, from encouraging independent thought to leading the masses in the direction desired by the party, just as in the 1960s: “They are slowly being remodelled as thought-controlling machines.”
That has meant a focus on Marxism and Socialism and stomping out liberal concepts such as constitutional checks on power and an unfettered civil society. Leader Xi Jinping was “basically getting rid of institutional rule, which has defined China for the past 30 years,” Jiang added.
The stifling of academics is part of a broader crackdown on everything from the entertainment industry to businesses.
Wang Yaqiu, a senior China researcher with Human Rights Watch, said: “Xi has increased control over all aspects of society, and ideological control is an essential part of that.
“If you can control how people think, it then becomes easier to control how people behave.”
Lao's essay mentioned Li's situation without using her name and was removed from Wechat hours after it appeared. It is unclear what has happened to Lao.