University scholars receive a gag order from the top telling them what they can and cannot address in the classroom, including topics like freedom of the press, civil society, civic rights, mistakes made by the Communist Party, elite cronyism, and an independent judiciary.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - University professors have been notified not to teach democratic values to their students or talk about the Communist Party's mistakes. The notice lists a number of topics that the government does not want to be addressed in class, namely freedom of the press, civil society, civic rights, mistakes made by the Communist Party, elite cronyism, and an independent judiciary.

"The purpose of this notice is just to tell you as a teacher to be a bit careful about what you're saying," said Wang Jiangsong, a philosophy professor at the China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing.

A law lecturer in Shanghai also said that he too had been notified on forbidden topics. Others could not confirm or deny the gag order.

In the past few years, Chinese campuses have seen a revival in pro-democracy activism. Campuses were the cradle of China's 1989 democratic revolution crushed by tanks in Tiananmen Square.

Increasingly, intellectuals, professors and legal experts have become outspoken critics of the one-party dictatorship and the suppression of civil and human rights in China.

Although most of them do not go so far as to call for a full democratic system, they have become advocates for internal reform of the Communist Party and an end to corruption.

 

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