Spied on. Fired. Publicly shamed. China’s crackdown on professors reminds many of Mao era
LA TimesThe professor was under surveillance. Despite such scrutiny, Sun Peidong felt lucky to be teaching in Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University, the only school left in China offering truthful courses on the repressive Cultural Revolution of half a century ago. For Fang Fang, 65, whose real name is Wang Fang, the crackdown is a continuation of the ideology that drove China’s Cultural Revolution — a period of radical violence under Mao‘s leadership, when youth militias roamed the nation denouncing and often killing intellectuals, authority figures and anyone labeled a “class enemy.” It is also, she noted, a failure to confront the damage that legacy did. “This hollowing and hiding of history affects countless people’s worldviews and most basic value judgments.” Our education teaches many of us only to forget, even if our bodies are still wounded. “You cannot wake a people who are pretending to be sleeping.” The department party secretary ordered Sun to write a personal statement pledging that she’d stop speaking to foreign media.
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