China's growing threat to academic freedom | Hacker News Reader

China's growing threat to academic freedom

japantimes.co.jp

181 pointsilamont55 comments

Anyone know what parts specifically of the KMT’s story are “left out” in the version of history promulgated by the PRC, such that a full accounting would be risky?

My first guess: the strong affiliation between Sun Yat-sen and the party, since the CCP still seems to respect Sun and his Three Principles and use (their interpretations of) them to justify CCP tentpoles.

From what I hear, the CCP is displayed as bearing the brunt of the Japanese assault in Chinese textbooks, with the KMT only playing a minor role. I guess they want to avoid the KMT looking like war heroes whose weakness after the war was abused by the CCP to seize power.

EDIT: For anyone interested in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the civil war that followed it, HistoryLapse (by HN user domnuprofesor) ran an interesting series of articles, starting with this one: https://en.historylapse.org/japanese-invasion-of-china-durin...

The question of which fource contributed the most in a war is actually not that easy.

For example, the answer of who defeated Nazi changed significantly in the last 70 years in Europe [0].

[0]: https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the-successful-70-year...

This is interesting. I wish there were more data points, they only show opinion in France in 1945, 1994 and 2004.

The USSR may have saved Europe from Germany, but the USA saved Western Europe from the USSR. The French in 1945 were likely aware of this.

The French in 1945 voted the communists into power - so I'm not sure they generally had the same views on the USSR as modern people do.

That is true. That said, the French Communist Party and Stalin aren't exactly the same thing.

The party line of the French Communist Party in the 1940s was Stalinist. It wasn't until the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising in the following decade that French Communism saw a schism between pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet sides.

The Communist Party was very influential but the government after the war was center-left and Republican (in the French sense of the word), and the political program agreed upon by all the political currents that formed the Resistance was a compromise across the entire spectrum (the Resistance started on the very right and integrated Communist elements after the USSR went to war with Germany). While it pains people to acknowledge it, the Vichy government itself passed a lot of social reforms prior to 1945.

They were a social and ideological force to be reckoned with but they never really went into power, De Gaulle saw to that.

In postwar France the PCF had a large swathe of support after the war due to the Communist role in the resistance (among other reasons). At this time the PCF was a very pro-Soviet party and this support for the Soviets may have translated into the result that you see in the referenced poll.

Support for the PCF waned after de-Stalinization, the Hungarian Uprising and finally the Prague Spring; I'd wager that if one were to look at levels of support for the PCF over the years one could map the switch in perception as to which country contributed most to winning the war.

They don't and can't deny the affiliation between Sun Yat-Sen and the KMT since it's clear Sun founded the KMT. Rather, they place most of the blame on Chiang Kai Shek for starting anti-Communist campaigns in the 1920s such as the Shanghai Massacre[1]. Indeed communist members dominated the left wing of the KMT before Sun died.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_massacre

As someone who was educated in China for 11 years, I would argue the part of KMT that CCP left out in my history book was mostly covering up the corruption and incompetence of KMT.

For example, little did I know that KMT deliberately destroyed a dam to "stop" Japanese army that killed almost 1 million instantly and later caused a famine in Henan that caused between 288,006 and 1,484,983 deaths right at my hometown[0][1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_famine_of_1942%E2%80%9...

Edit: changed to English wikipedia pages from Chinese

Why would they want to leave that out

Perhaps because my history book was a textbook first, the CCP touches were extra. Not the other way around.

I would fairly shocked if the CCP didn’t issue guidelines for history textbooks in addition to a post-publication review for approval.

English articles:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_famine_of_1942%E2%80%9...

I was going to link your [0] and my [0] as translations on Wikipedia, but then I noticed my [0] already has a different Chinese article assigned as its translation.

thanks for the links, updated.

Wow, your significant figures are way off here

Sorry which ones?

I quoted from the Chinese wikipedia page and there might be some discrepancies there...

They mean that a range with error-bars as wide as (288,006 - 1,484,983) should look more like (0.3 - 1.5 million), since that sort of discrepancy between the estimates implies that neither measurement could have possibly been accurate down to the individual person.

Ah that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

Hardly a "growing threat" to academic freedom in a country that has never properly had it in the first place.

It is a growing threat when that reach starts extending outside their boarders.

Sure, but that isn't happening here. According to the title, the guy was in China, and got arrested there. It shouldn't be any surprise that if you enter an oppressive nation with material they've banned, you'll be subject to arrest.

If you progress farther than the title, you may discover that the official banned book was legally purchased by the professor at a Chinese book store. I think most of use from non-totalitarian states would be a rather surprised if that happened to us. The article goes on the suggest that the police thought he fit the profile of someone doing bad stuff, and made up a charge that fit the criminal persona they’d pegged on him.

...And? The person you're responding to is right, none of this is surprising to hear about happening in China. When you throw people into concentration camps pursuing cultural genocide you lose a lot of credibility as far as what people expect from your police.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=anarchist+cookbook

You can buy anarchist cookbook and have it delivered in UK, apparently.

2017 a young man was arrested, and tried, for having a copy.

Is the UK a totalitarian state in your opinion?

Lot of discussion here, but no one is really defending the Chinese government's actions and its general policies on academic freedom. That's because they are basically indefensible.

You know, the Chinese government tells us that its people are strongly united behind it, except for a few dissidents. But its actions are those of a government that is scared to death much of its population opposes it, or at least supports it very weakly.

> book of documents relating to 20th century Kuomintang Party history.

Wondering what book it may be.

KMT is related to Taiwan even though they want closer ties to CCP

They , KMT, lost to the CCP in the civil war and fled to Taiwan.

nazi germany in 21st century, can’t wait for new wolfenstein

That is actually a great idea, hope someone from id Software sees this.

The first AAA game completely banned in China?

I’d settle for a modern remake of Hong Kong 1997.

CCP is more like USSR v2: patched and improved. Still based on the same ideas and IIRC, Mao was inspired by Lenin. The gov control is also based on fear and cruelty. If this analogy is correct, it may be interesting to recall what crushed USSR: it was McDonalds. That's right. People were upset that on the west life is so obviously better, so they collectively and subconsciously sabotaged the gov. Offer the key people in CCP a better life and safety and they will happily dump Xi.

Stulta lex sed lex.

> Stulta lex sed lex.

Latin for _stupid law but law_

It's a parody of a saying from the legal profession, "Dura lex sed lex" ("The law is harsh, but it is the law."), so the appropriate translation would be "The law is stupid, but it is the law."

"Iwatani had confessed to “collecting inappropriate historical materials.” At the time of his detention, he had allegedly been found in possession of a book of documents relating to 20th century Kuomintang Party history. Unlike the literati Lu and his “forbidden book”, however, Iwatani had legitimately purchased his book at a bookstore."

There is no "law" here. Do not confuse a country with a tradition of the rule of law with one without.

Given that there's no list of forbidden books, nor any realistic way of determining beforehand whether a specific book would be considered detrimental to China's security or otherwise would be illegal, is it actually a law?

I am inclined to contrast it to what it's like in my own country. Canada, of course like every country, has a variety of laws that prohibit certain kinds of expression.

The difference is that, while you may need to brush up on your legal scholarship and perhaps consult a lawyer, you can be quite confident, before you commit an act, whether it is or isn't actually illegal. For matters on the fringes of jurisprudence, the debate whether it is or isn't banned will occur publicly at trial, with reasons given and debated based on the text of the laws in question, and stand as precedent for what counts as illegal under that law.

The content of a law may be arbitrary, but they aren't arbitrarily made up as you go. That's not law then, it's the fiat of a dictator.

Maybe. I recall shortly after sept 11th 2001 when there was general panic in the US, some guy there was arrested for possessing a book. He'd just taken it out of the library.

Here in the UK there are deliberate 'chilling effect' laws which are meant to discourage trying something by making them sufficiently unspecified as to catch anything the government wants to (heard about these on the radio 4 programme 'file on 4', it was about export restrictions).

Western governments are vastly better but they can do the same filthy tricks when it suits them.

Someone was tried for downloading a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook last year in the UK, IIRC.

Sorry, it was 2017.

Amazon didn't get shut down for selling it though, strange that. It's almost like totalitarians like to keep laws on the book they can whip out when they want to use them.

Reportedly you can be charged for "possessing information that could be used by a terrorist", a cached copy of a Lockpicking Lawyer vid from YouTube, maybe. Lock me away!

Summum Ius Summa Iniuria.

He was freed:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/11/15/national/crime-...

What’s missing from this article is that Nobu Iwatani previously worked for defense and foreign ministries in Japan. He is no “civilian”.

This is the same argument used by some to claim that Huawei is the extended arm of Chinese surveillance agencies (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20366883 ) and I don't think it's very convincing. Work for the government once, lose civilian status forever?

The revolving door between the two, at the very least, warrant closer scrutiny, even if they don't imply breathless accusation of corruption.

The fact he previously worked on a project for the military is mentioned in the article.

You don't get to redefine the word "civilian" to suit your politics. Merely working for a defense ministry doesn't make someone a member of the armed forces.

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