Category: Free Speech

“You Think I’m Scared of You, Communist Party?”

(p. A11) HONG KONG — The beige van squatted outside of a Wuhan hospital, its side and back doors ajar. Fang Bin, a local clothing salesman, peered inside as he walked past. He groaned: “So many dead.” He counted five, six, seven, eight body bags. “This is too many.”

That moment, in a 40-minute video about the coronavirus outbreak that has devastated China, propelled Mr. Fang to internet fame. Then, less than two weeks later, he disappeared.

Days earlier, another prominent video blogger in Wuhan, Chen Qiushi, had also gone missing.

. . .

The disappearance of the two men . . . underscores that the ruling Communist Party has no intention of loosening its grip on free speech.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said last month that officials needed to “strengthen the guidance of public opinion.” While Chinese social media has overflowed with fear and grief, state propaganda outlets have emphasized Mr. Xi’s steady hand, framed the fight against the outbreak as a form of patriotism and shared upbeat videos of medical workers dancing.

. . .

As time went on, Mr. Chen, usually energetic, began to show strain. “I am scared,” he said on Jan. 30 [2020]. “In front of me is the virus. Behind me is China’s legal and administrative power.”

The authorities had contacted his parents to ask for his whereabouts, he said. He teared up suddenly. Then, his finger pointing at the camera, he blurted: “I’m not even scared of death. You think I’m scared of you, Communist Party?”

For the full story, see:

Vivian Wang. “2 Video Bloggers, Posting Virus Reports, Go Missing.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 15, 2020): A11.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 21 [sic], 2020, and has the title “They Documented the Coronavirus Crisis in Wuhan. Then They Vanished.”)

Communists Punished Dr. Li Wenliang For Speaking Truth on Coronavirus

Doctor Li Wenliang. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) The Chinese public has staged what amounts to an online revolt after the death of a doctor, Li Wenliang, who tried to warn of a mysterious virus that has since killed hundreds of people in China, infected tens of thousands and forced the government to corral many of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

. . .

For many people in China, the doctor’s death shook loose pent-up anger and frustration at how the government mishandled the situation by not sharing information earlier and by silencing whistle-blowers. It also seemed, to those online, that the government hadn’t learned lessons from previous crises, continuing to quash online criticism and investigative reports that provide vital information.

Some users of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, are saying the doctor’s death resonated because he was an ordinary person who was forced to admit to wrongdoing for doing the right thing.

Dr. Li was reprimanded by the police after he shared concerns about the virus in a social messaging app with medical school classmates on Dec. 30 [2019].

Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.”

The doctor eventually went public with his experiences and gave interviews to help the public better understand the unfolding epidemic. (The New York Times interviewed Dr. Li days before his death.)

“He didn’t want to become a hero, but for those of us in 2020, he had reached the upper limit of what we can imagine a hero would do,” one Weibo post read. The post is one of many that users say they wrote out of shame and guilt for not standing up to an authoritarian government, as Dr. Li did.

. . .

The grief was so widespread that it appeared in unlikely corners.

“Refusing to listen to your ‘whistling,’ your country has stopped ticking, and your heart has stopped beating,” Hong Bing, the Shanghai bureau chief of the Communist Party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, wrote on her timeline on WeChat, an instant-messaging platform. “How big a price do we have to pay to make you and your whistling sound louder, to reach every corner of the East?”

Both the Chinese- and English-language Twitter accounts of People’s Daily tweeted that Dr. Li’s death had prompted “national grief.” Both accounts deleted those messages before replacing them with more neutral, official-sounding posts.

. . .

Wang Gaofei, the chief executive of Weibo, which carries out many of the orders passed down from China’s censors, pondered what lessons China should learn from Dr. Li’s death.

“We should be more tolerant of people who post ‘untruthful information’ that aren’t malicious,” he said in a post. “If we’re only allowed to speak what we can guarantee is fact, we’re going to pay prices.”

. . .

“R.I.P. our hero,” Fan Bao, a prominent tech investor, posted on his WeChat timeline.

. . .

The hashtag #wewantfreedomofspeech# was created on Weibo at 2 a.m. on Friday [February 7, 2020] and had over two million views and over 5,500 posts by 7 a.m. It was deleted by censors, along with related topics, such as ones saying the Wuhan government owed Dr. Li an apology.

“I love my country deeply,” read one post under that topic. “But I don’t like the current system and the ruling style of my country. It covered my eyes, my ears and my mouth.”

The writer of the post complained about not being able to gain access to the internet beyond the Great Firewall. “I’ve been holding back for a long time. I feel we’ve all been holding back for a long time. It erupted today.”

Talking about freedom of speech on the Chinese internet is taboo, even though it’s written into the Constitution. So it’s a small miracle that the freedom of speech hashtag survived for over five hours.

The country’s high-powered executives have been less blunt, but have echoed the same sentiments online.

“It’s time to reflect on the deeply rooted, stability-trumps-everything thinking that’s hurt everyone,” Wang Ran, chairman of the investment bank CEC Capital, wrote on Weibo. “We all want stability,” he asked. “Will you be more stable if you cover the others’ mouths while walking on a tightrope?

For the full story, see:

Li Yuan. “Online Revolt in China as a Doctor Is Lionized.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 8, 2020): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed dates, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 7, 2020, and has the title “Widespread Outcry in China Over Death of Coronavirus Doctor.”)

Chinese Communist Officials Rewarded for Loyalty, Not for Competence or Boldness

(p. A1) The Chinese people are getting a rare glimpse of how China’s giant, opaque bureaucratic system works — or, rather, how it fails to work. Too many of its officials have become political apparatchiks, fearful of making decisions that anger their superiors and too removed and haughty when dealing with the public to admit mistakes and learn from them.

“The most important issue this outbreak exposed is the local government’s lack of action and fear of action,” said Xu Kaizhen, a best-selling author who is famous for his novels that explore the intricate workings of China’s bureaucratic politics.

“Under the high-pressure environment of an anticorruption campaign, most people, including senior government officials, only care about self-preservation,” Mr. Xu said. “They don’t want to be the first to speak up. They wait for their superiors to make decisions and are only accountable to their superiors instead of the people.”

The Chinese government appears to be aware of the problem. The Communist Party’s top leadership acknowledged in a meeting on Monday [February 3, 2020] that the (p. A9) epidemic was “a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance.”

. . .

Chinese officials are spending as much as one-third of their time on political studying sessions, a lot of which are about Mr. Xi’s speeches. Political loyalty weighs much more in performance evaluations than before. Now the rule of thumb in Chinese officialdom seems to be demonstrating loyalty as explicitly as possible, keeping everything else vague and evading responsibility at all costs when things go wrong.

. . .

On social media, low-level cadres are complaining that they are receiving so many instructions from the higher-ups that they spend most of their time filling out spreadsheets instead of getting real work done. In a social media post headlined “The Formalism Under the Mask,” the author wrote, “Most people in the system don’t do things to solve problems. They do things to solve responsibilities.”

For the full story, see:

Li Yuan. “In China, Virus Spurred Rush of Blame Shifting.” The New York Times (Wednesday, February 5, 2020): A1 & A9.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 14 [sic], 2020, and has the title “Coronavirus Crisis Shows China’s Governance Failure.”)

“Senior Communist Party Leaders” Call Coronavirus “a Major Test of China’s System and Capacity for Governance”

(p. A1) Mr. Xi presided over a meeting of senior Communist Party leaders at which they acknowledged shortcomings in policies on public health and emergency management, according to a report by China’s official news agency. The leaders called the coronavirus epidemic “a major test of China’s system and capacity for governance.”

Xinhua quoted Mr. Xi as saying that officials who resist orders and “lack boldness” could be punished– . . .

For the full story, see:

Sui-Lee Wee. “China Foresees ‘Test’ as World Shuts Its Doors.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 4, 2020): A1 & A6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 3, 2020, and has the title “Beijing Sees ‘Major Test’ as Doors to China Close and Coronavirus Deaths Surpass SARS.”)

Thiel Advises Zuckerberg to Defend Free Speech

(p. A5) Facebook Inc.’s senior leadership is increasingly divided over how to address criticism of the company’s effect on U.S. politics, with board member and billionaire investor Peter Thiel serving as an influential voice advising CEO Mark Zuckerberg not to bow to public pressure, according to people familiar with the matter.

One flashpoint of late: political advertisements. Mr. Thiel has argued that Facebook should stick to its controversial decision, announced in September [2019], to continue accepting them and to not fact-check those from politicians, the people said.

. . .

Some of Mr. Thiel’s views are shared by others within Facebook, including on political ads, with many current and former executives advising Mr. Zuckerberg that the company shouldn’t be in the position of deciding what claims are accurate, people familiar with the matter said.

. . .

Mr. Zuckerberg has long valued Mr. Thiel’s advice. Some people close to both men described their current relationship as an alliance, based in part on their long history together.

Mr. Thiel, 52 years old, was the first outside investor in Facebook, and ultimately made more than $1 billion on his stake. Early on, Mr. Thiel advised Mr. Zuckerberg, now 35, to focus on growing the Facebook platform’s user base rather than on making money, contrarian advice at the time that laid the groundwork for Facebook’s riches today. Mr. Thiel and his funds have since sold off most of their Facebook shares.

. . .

Mr. Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have said repeatedly that they value ideological diversity on the board, although that view isn’t shared by all of the company’s workforce.

“Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans,” said a former Facebook employee who worked in its political group. “It’s a reality people aren’t willing to accept.”

For the full story, see:

Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and Jeff Horwitz. “Political Divisions Roil Facebook.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, December 18, 2019): A5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 17, 2019, and has the title “Peter Thiel at Center of Facebook’s Internal Divisions on Politics.” The last sentence quoted above appears in the online version, but not in the print version, of the article.)

Free Speech Is Violated on Many Campuses

(p. A15) Most Americans know that higher education has for several decades been in the grip of a deeply intolerant, fanatical and uncompromising strain of progressive activism. Students and sometimes even faculty members regularly chase heterodox speakers off campus, demand complete fealty from terrified campus bureaucracies, and denounce and destroy each other over the slightest and most inconsequential ideological deviations.

. . .

. . . evidence of ideological intransigence can be found in the “bias response teams” that are now regular features at many universities. One Michigan State student had a bias report filed against him for watching a Ben Shapiro video in a dorm. A faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was reported for having a Trump sticker in his office window. Another professor was hit with a bias report after discussing the infamous Janet Jackson “nipplegate” controversy. The offended student said the professor had not couched the discussion with enough moral qualifiers.

These incidents don’t represent the normal campus hysterics to which we’ve become accustomed. A growing and strident sect of campus activism is coming to oppose not merely differing opinions but even talking about differing opinions.

For the full commentary, see:

Daniel Payne. “There’s No Safe Space for Ideas on Campus ‘Animal Farms’.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, November 26, 2019): A15.

(Note: ellipses added; bolded word is italicized in original.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 25, 2019, and has the same title as the print version.)

“You Escaped China, but Now You’re Supporting Them”

(p. A6) HONG KONG — The tapioca pearls at Fred Liu’s bubble teahouse are springy and fresh, just like the fish balls at Elaine Lau’s noodle shop. But that is not the only reason customers flock to these eateries in Hong Kong’s bustling Causeway Bay shopping district.

Both are members of the so-called yellow economy, shops that openly support the democracy movement remaking Hong Kong as it strives to protect the freedoms differentiating the territory from the rest of China.

After seven months of street protests against Beijing’s assault on these liberties, Hong Kong is color-coded — and bitterly divided. The yellow economy refers to the hue of umbrellas once used to defend demonstrators against pepper spray and streams of tear gas. That is in contrast to blue businesses, which support the police.

. . .

As the protests gathered force last year, Rocky Siu watched as an orderly column of demonstrators, miles long, marched past one of his ramen restaurants. When the police cracked down, he opened his doors, offering half-price bowls of noodles and free saline solution to wash the tear gas from protesters’ eyes.

“I’m losing money, but that’s not the point,” he said. “We have to support our young people.”

Mr. Siu’s father was born in China and came to Hong Kong to seek a better life. But he owns a jewelry factory on the mainland and is, as Mr. Siu puts it, “deep blue.”

“I tell him, ‘I don’t understand. You escaped China, but now you’re supporting them,’” Mr. Siu said. “To me, it’s not yellow or blue. It’s black and white, right and wrong.”

For the full story, see:

Hannah Beech. “Hong Kong Businesses Taking Stands on Either Side of the Beijing Rift.” The New York Times (Monday, January 20, 2020): A6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 19, 2020, and has the title “Yellow or Blue? In Hong Kong, Businesses Choose Political Sides.”)

Communist China Building “a Digital Totalitarian State”

(p. A1) ZHENGZHOU, China — China is ramping up its ability to spy on its nearly 1.4 billion people to new and disturbing levels, giving the world a blueprint for how to build a digital totalitarian state.

Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others — into sweeping tools for authoritarian control, according to police and private databases examined by The New York Times.

Once combined and fully operational, the tools can help police grab the identities of people as they walk down the street, find out who they are meeting with and identify who does and doesn’t belong to the Communist Party.

For the full story, see:

Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik. “China’s Blueprint for a Digital Totalitarian State.” The New York Times (Wednesday, December 18, 2019): A1 & A10.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 17, 2019, and has the title “A Surveillance Net Blankets China’s Cities, Giving Police Vast Powers.”)

Facebook’s “Lord of the Rings” Defense of Free Speech

(p. B1) On Dec. 30, [2019] Andrew Bosworth, the head of Facebook’s virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the social network’s powerful platform against Mr. Trump. But citing the “Lord of the Rings” franchise and the philosopher John Rawls, Mr. Bosworth said that doing so would eventually backfire.

“I find myself desperately wanting to pull any lever at my disposal to avoid the same result,” he wrote. “So what stays my hand? I find myself thinking of the Lord of the Rings at this moment.

“Specifically when Frodo offers the ring to Galadrial and she imagines using the power righteously, at first, but knows it will eventually corrupt her,” he said, misspelling the name of the character Galadriel. “As tempting as it is to use the tools available to us to change the outcome, I am confident we must never do that or we will become that which we fear.”

For the full story, see:

Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac. “Agonizing at Facebook Over Trump.” The New York Times (Wednesday, January 8, 2020): B1 & B7.

(Note: bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 7, 2020, and has the title “Don’t Tilt Scales Against Trump, Facebook Executive Warns.”)

Anonymous Message Apps Enable Protesters to Act at “Hyperspeed”

(p. A7) In June [2019], hundreds of thousands of young protesters connected by messaging apps took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest the encroachment of China’s central authorities on life in their city.

Four months on, antigovernment demonstrations have swept more than a dozen countries. From Chile and Bolivia to Lebanon and Spain, millions have taken to the streets—sometimes peacefully, often not.

. . .

Propelling the action on the streets to a kind of hyperspeed is a new generation of encrypted-messaging software such as WhatsApp and Telegram that enable large groups of protesters who have never met each other to communicate anonymously.

Whereas platforms like Twitter and Facebook were great for broadcasting ideas, the newer technology allows any would-be activist connected to the group to build consensus for large-scale actions in real time—without fear of being identified.

Meanwhile, the internet’s global reach has helped activists learn by watching and connecting with peers in other countries.

For the full story, see:

John Lyons in Hong Kong, Nazih Osseiran in Beirut and Margherita Stancati in Barcelona. “A Wave of Protest Rattles Governments.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, November 23, 2019): A7.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 22, 2019, and has the title “Global Wave of Protests Rattles Governments.” The penultimate sentence quoted above, appears in the online, but not in the print, version of the article.)

Jailed Cuban Human Rights Dissident Fears for Life

(p. A1) MIAMI — The activist José Daniel Ferrer García made his desperate plea by hand.

“On hunger and thirst strike,” Mr. Ferrer, one of Cuba’s most well-known dissidents, scrawled on a piece of paper smuggled out of prison. “They have done everything to me.”

Mr. Ferrer, 49, has been jailed since Oct. 1 [2019] on what human rights activists say is a trumped-up assault and battery case. In his note, he described being dragged, cuffed by his hands and feet, and left in his underwear for two weeks to be nipped by mosquitoes and the morning chill.

“My life is in grave danger,” he warned.

Mr. Ferrer’s detention renews the spotlight on Cuba and the lengths it goes to against dissidents under President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Nineteen months after assuming the presidency amid high hopes for reform within Cuba and abroad, Mr. Díaz-Canel leads a government that bears a striking similarity to the Castro dynasty that preceded him, critics say.

For the full story, see:

Frances Robles. “For Cubans, a New 3G Bullhorn, but the Same Same Old Arrests.” The New York Times (Saturday, December 3, 2019): A1 and A10.

(Note: bracketed year added.]

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 2, 2019, and has the title “Activist’s Case Hints at What Changes and What Stays the Same in Cuba.” The online version says that the title of the New York print edition was “For Cubans, New Ways to Speak Out, but the Same Old Arrests.” The title of my National print edition was “For Cubans, a New 3G Bullhorn, but the Same Same Old Arrests.”)