MCLC: bold speech at Beida goes viral

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: bold speech at Beida goes viral
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For the full Chinese text of the speech, go to the link below.

Kirk

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Source: Tea Leaf Nation (11/20/12):
http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/11/a-bold-speech-at-elite-chinese-univers
ity-goes-viral-everyone-lies/

A Bold Speech at Elite Chinese University Goes Viral: “Everyone Lies”

Freedom of speech has always been a sensitive topic in China. But when a
prominent commentator calls for the right to free speech in one of the
most famous (and state-controlled) universities in China, it raises the
stakes yet further.

On November 18, fresh off of a forced blogging hiatus coinciding with
China’s leadership handover at its 18th Party Congress, outspoken
commentator and blogger Li Chengpeng (@李承鹏
<http://weibo.com/lichengpeng>)
delivered a sharp and powerful speech called “Talk” at Peking University,
directly criticizing the lack of free speech in China. On the same day,
text of Li’s talk (shown below this article) was widely shared on Chinese
blogs and social media, with thousands of reposts and comments showing
support. One commenter wrote: “He speaks for many people’s hearts.” Yet
some of the shared content on Sina Weibo, China’s preeminent microblogging
platform, had been censored by the next day.

Li started with a bold statement: "Chinese people are losing the power to
talk.” He described the 1960s in China, citing examples of how the
disastrous Cultural Revolution forced citizens to make a choice: Lie, or
shut up. At that age, the whole country lost its ability to talk. “You
couldn’t talk about your needs: I’m hungry; you couldn’t talk about your
emotions: I love you; you couldn’t criticize your leaders; … you couldn’t
tell the scientific truth.”

He went on to describe the “nonsense” Orwellian terms that the government
has used to paper over excesses, including “vacation-style treatment,” (休假
式
治疗) “protective demolition,” (保护性拆迁) “bribery out of courtesy” (礼节性
受贿) and 
“confirmatory election” (确认性选举). Li insisted that “we haven’t recovered
from our inability to talk” due to strict censorship. ”Every time I see
some department claim that our country has the largest number of books and
newspapers in the world, I think, actually we can just say it produces the
largest amount of toilet paper.”

Li also cited the recent mass incidents in the cities of Qidong
<http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/07/massive-protest-near-shanghai-scuttle
s-wastewater-pipeline/> and Ningbo
<http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/10/nimby-protest-watch-tear-gas-used-in-
ningbo/> as pointing to further fundamental problems: ”These incidents
don’t have a political purpose; people were just making their voices
heard, but it got out of hand. I think the most fundamental problem is the
system itself. There’s a huge bug in the design at the beginning, and in
order to fix the bug, you use anti-virus software, but the software itself
has a bug…  the anti-virus thinks people don’t have the right to speak,
yet it has the power to punish.  [The government] is arrogant, sensitive,
and closed-minded.”

Li ascribed a circular, theatrical quality to debate in modern China. He
said, "We [the citizens] know they [the authorities] are lying, and they
know that we know they are lying, and we know that they know that we know
they are lying, and they know that we are pretending that they did not lie
…. This is the reality. Everyone lies to each other, and this is a lie to
make ends meet. … The most terrible thing about a country is not poverty
[or] hunger … but people who have lost the right and the ability to speak.”

Yet in the end, the fiercely critical Li said he remains optimistic: “I
hope that this nation is only temporarily without words. Although words
have always been the easiest for power to control, it is always the last
fortress to fall in war …  I am always critical of this country yet I am
always full of hope for this nation.”