言论自由 Freedom of speech in China

Ever since my first class while studying abroad at Peking University a few years ago, I have been amazed by how much freedom of speech there is in China. There are of course limits, most noticeably if you are publishing something in book, article, or blog form, and I've written recently about the limits of academic freedom. But otherwise, if you're not speaking in a public setting, you can say pretty much anything you want.

The original surprising incident for me was that our first class topic in an international relations class at PKU was the 1989 Tiananmen protests. Of course, it was a class taught in English of mostly foreigners, with a few Chinese students thrown in, and I'm pretty sure the professor, who received his phd in the US, chose the topic intentionally to destroy all previous notions we had about freedom of expression in China. He certainly succeeded. One of the Chinese IR majors in the class said that they did discuss this incident in her Chinese classes as well.

The recent incident was at my university's new years/end of the semester party. The opening act (Chinese parties are basically a combination of a variety show and banquet) was someone who did imitations of the top two leaders in China, as well as the previous top two leaders. At first I thought he was just going to poke fun at the school's leaders because I was under the belief that publicly making fun of the top leaders was unacceptable (of course, many people do so in private conversations and online). Granted, he didn't compare Hu Jintao to a monkey and his imitations were very very mild by Daily Show or Colbert Report standards, but there were parts I found funny and even more parts the Chinese teachers found funny. Still, this goes what most Westerners think of when they think of freedom of speech and China.