Brave New China
In Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World writers and intellectuals are banished to an island where they have complete freedom to say and do whatever they like - as long as there is no risk of them infecting the rest of society with their ideas.
From what I’ve heard about intellectual freedom in China, it follows a very similar model. While blogs and web sites might be filtered for specific forbidden topics and words, and reporters jailed for being too critical, intellectuals have a fair amount of freedom to explore any topic they see fit.
This view is confirmed by Daniel Bell’s wonderful account of his experiences teaching political theory in Beijing:
In subsequent classes, I learned to relax with the students and to go over the material without worrying about sensitive political implications. We discussed Christian, Realist, Confucian, and Islamic perspectives on just and unjust war, with the students doing presentations and debating more issues among themselves. The student from the party school did an excellent presentation on the Maoist perspective. In debate, he made thoughtful and constructive comments, as one might expect of a talented student. To the extent he had a political motivation, it seemed to be the desire to learn theories that may be useful for China’s future reform.
I have to say, his students seem much more interested in debating ideas than the Taiwanese student’s I’ve encountered - despite (or because of?) the greater freedoms they have.
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Comments
I sure look stupid.
Regardless, Daniel A. Bell teaches at Tsinghua University, which is one of the very top schools in China. It actually dates back to the Republican Period and was reknowned as the prep school for those who wanted to study overseas. And, while not as famous as that Daniel Bell, he is a scholar of international stature.
I still don’t think his experience is comparable to Dong Hwa or is typical of what goes on in Chinese universities.
From what I’ve heard from others, all of the top schools in China allow a fair amount of intellectual freedom these days. The censorship limits such ideas from being shared between the elite and the rest of society (i.e. through the internet), as I implied in my reference to Huxely. Also, note that he doesn’t just discuss Tsinghua, but also the Central Party School.
I have always maintained that the KMT and PFP elites are more out of touch with China than Chinese intellectual elites. I agree with you. I have not met 1 highly educated mainland Chinese who has trouble with the idea of Taiwan self-control.
While I have no trouble believing that students at Tsinghua and CPS can talk about anything they want, my colleague who taught English at Guangzhou Normal University told me that students were routinely told by their Chinese professors which of his topics they could talk about. He explained that sometimes, the students would be very active but when they came back to his next class, they would refuse to talk. When questioned about this, they would reply, “Our Chinese professors told us not to talk about this with you.”
The moral of this is that unless you are able to hob-nob with the elites or their kids, China’s universities are pretty much the stereotype Taiwan’s fringe Taiwan independence crowd makes it out to be.
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
A world famous theorist at a top school experiences unfettered academic freedom. Amazing.