Spied on. Fired. Publicly shamed. China's crackdown on professors reminds many of Mao era

China has to steal technology from other countries instead of doing its own innovation because they squelch their own citizens thinking.

Alice Su
,LA Times•June 27, 2020

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Sun is among a growing number of university professors who have been targeted and punished for “improper speech” in recent years, part of a Chinese Communist Party drive to tighten ideological control.

Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, the party banned discussion in 2013 of "Western concepts" such as universal values, a free press, civil society and the party's historical errors. In 2018, teachers from kindergarten through university were ordered to adhere to "Xi Jinping thought" and defend the party.

Those guidelines have hardened during a nationalist surge around the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to public shaming of intellectuals that remind many of the Mao Zedong era.

Professors have been betrayed by their own students or attacked online, then formally punished: In February, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences fired Zhou Peiyi, a visiting lecturer from Hong Kong, after she criticized China’s coronavirus response on social media.

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Critics accuse Fang Fang of "handing a knife" to Western countries to smear China. They have sent her death threats and condemned her supporters, digging through their old social media posts to find anything that deviates from the party line.

Sounds a lot like both liberals and conservatives in this country.

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