China and the Difficulties of Dissent

China and the Difficulties of Dissent

"It is important to understand that China is a fascist dictatorship. The term “fascist” is now thrown around with such carelessness that it has lost most of its meaning outside the offices of a few historians or political science professors. But fascism, in its original early twentieth century incarnation, meant a political system defined by three attributes—authoritarianism, ethnonationalism, and an economic model in which capitalism co-existed with large state-directed industries and partnerships between the government and corporations.

China is an ethnonationalist, corporatist, authoritarian state. The government harasses, imprisons, or murders those who demand the right to vote. It engages in cultural genocide and seeks to make the Chinese dictatorship ideologically inseparable from the self-image of the Chinese people. It protects its domestic economy from foreign competition, subsidises all its important industries, mandates that government officials sit on the boards of all large companies, and does not allow independent labour unions. Despite the use of the word “communist” in both the name of the state and the name of its ruling elite, China is fascist. The label of communism is now merely a historical anomaly, relevant only to the extent that totalitarianism remains an underlying principle, the source code of a regime that has likely killed more people than any other in history...

One would expect China to encounter great difficulties spreading its influence on liberal Australian university campuses...

China, however, has had no problem spreading its influence.This is partly because most of its influence is not visible to students or the general public. For instance, China scholars from Western universities require access to Chinese sources and travel visas. In order to secure interviews or travel permits, they must not write anything the Chinese government dislikes...

Most academics speak euphemistically about this self-censorship. They will claim that you “have to be measured” when talking about China and that you have to be “sensitive” to Chinese feelings, which makes acquiescence to Chinese coercion sound warmer and fuzzier than it really is. They will claim that you have to see things from “China’s perspective,” and omit that this is the perspective of a regime that makes dissidents disappear.

The corporatisation of Australian universities has also made them vulnerable to implicit threats of Chinese sanctions. The commodity at stake is student fees because China can control how many students it will allow to leave the country to study at a foreign institution...

When I was a lecturer it was relatively common to go through an entire semester without a single criticism of the Chinese regime by Chinese students in front of their classmates. Occasionally, a courageous student would privately explain why. Students who voiced objections were monitored by their classmates and denounced to the home government. They in turn had representatives within the student bodies whose job it was to warn students about their activism and remind them of the consequences of dissent. By making sure the students knew they were being watched, the students would self-censor (as a minimum requirement) or defend China in whatever debate was taking place.

In this way, the Chinese students provide something priceless to the cultivation of China’s national image—they make the regime appear to be popular at home...

In the same way that China only allows self-censoring or friendly academics to enter the country, it only allows politically reliable students to leave it and study abroad. Students need to have family at home, good “social credit” scores, and it is best if they have family members who work for the Party. Hence, when I privately asked a friend why he could not speak out against China, despite his liberal inclinations and many years of residency in Australia, he excused himself from open dissenting duties with reference to his family at home. “It is dangerous for them”...

Visiting Chinese lecturers and students often firmly believe in all the fundamental elements of Chinese fascism (although, they do not call it that). They are brought up in a nationalist education system. They have usually made a lot of money under the regime (otherwise they could not afford to travel). They are taught there is no difference between the people, the Party, and the state. They are taught that all opposition to Chinese policies is either hypocritical, a misunderstanding, or racist. They are taught that China is being contained, hemmed in, limited in its growth by pernicious outside forces. And nothing will persuade them otherwise. Our openness to Chinese students, immigration, technological cooperation, investment, and trade is meaningless. Chinese victimhood is an ideology crafted for expedience, not because it accords with reality, and it is believed, disseminated, and defended by an indoctrinated, nationalistic establishment that has done rather well out of the regime...

Politburo member Li Changchun actually admitted that Confucius Institutes were “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda setup” as far back as 2009, and by 2014 some of the Institute leaders were openly censoring conferences by tearing out pages and refusing to hand them back."