Chinese Communist officials have tightened the speech restrictions that govern party members, a repudiation of internal calls for more freedom of speech.
“A member of the party must not publicly express opinions that are inconsistent with decisions made by the central leadership,” the newly-updated party manual says, according to the South China Morning Post’s translation.
That language has been praised by Chinese state media as “boosting democracy within the party,” but it stiffens the previous guidance, which warned against direct contradictions of Chinese authorities. The revision, the first of its kind in 16 years, comes after a year of domestic and international controversy about Chinese censorship — an issue that created a global uproar after doctors who sounded the alarm about the coronavirus pandemic faced punishment.
“The key point is freedom of speech, rights guaranteed by the constitution,” Tang Yiming, a classics professor in Wuhan, the city where the new contagion was first detected, wrote in an open letter in February. “If every citizen was allowed to practice their right to voice the truth, we would not be in such a mess, we would not have a national catastrophe with an international impact.”
That sentiment gained traction following the ordeal of Li Wenliang, the doctor who was punished for telling his friends that a new virus had emerged and then subsequently died of the sickness himself.
“It only shows that the government’s long-term tight control of society and people has almost completely destroyed the organization and self-help capabilities of Chinese society,” Shanghai-based constitutional scholar Zhang Xuezhong wrote in May.
Chinese officials have punished journalists who reported on the pandemic in the early days of the outbreak, while U.S. officials have cited the censorship as an endemic flaw of the Chinese Communist regime.
“Anyone tempted to believe this was just a case of overzealous local police, take note: China’s central government aired a news story about Dr. Li’s ‘rumor-mongering,’” White House deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger said earlier this year.
The new rule changes seem to seek a balance between allowing more candid internal discussions while clamping down on revelations that could embarrass the Chinese government if they were released on the internet.
“On the one hand, it is trying to emphasize the protection of rights of party members, but on the other hand, there’s an important line drawn to differentiate [what’s considered] inside and outside the party,” state-run Chinese Academy of Governance professor Zhu Lijia said.
