Two teachers in China
questioned the Communist Party.
And their punishment is shocking.
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
Did you know that the People’s Republic of China wrote a joke into its constitution? It’s true!
Article 35 says citizens “shall enjoy freedom of speech.”
That’s a real knee-slapper.
Because actually, the Chinese Communist Party does not allow freedom of speech. Perhaps
they’re afraid that if people have free speech, they’ll see that the entire Communist Party...
sits on a throne of lies! In fact, they’re so uptight
that they don’t even allow teachers to ask questions.
Which one teacher found out last month.
December 14 was the National Memorial Day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre in China. It’s
also known as the Rape of Nanjing. Japanese soldiers brutally killed and raped at least
tens of thousands of civilians in Nanjing. The death toll is disputed.
It happened in 1937, after Japan invaded China.
This video of a teacher named Song Gengyi went viral on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The student recording the video can be heard cursing under his breath and saying “sure,”
as in, “this video is sure to get this teacher in trouble!”
What she says actually might make sense. But unfortunately for her,
she was in China when she said it. And the Chinese
Communist Party doesn’t appreciate it when people spread critical thinking.
Especially because the Communist Party uses the Nanjing Massacre for anti-Japanese propaganda.
As this video went viral, many nationalistic Chinese netizens
demanded Song Gengyi be investigated. And so Song was reported to the authorities.
Later that day, the school administration,
Shanghai Aurora Vocational College, posted this on their official social media account.
It says “According to our school’s investigation...Song Gengyi made a
false statement during her ‘News Interview’ course...causing serious adverse social impacts.”
And then they fired her. So...a teacher lost her job for
causing serious adverse social impacts—like teaching students to think critically.
One of China’s major state-run media outlets, The People’s Daily, also chimed in to make
things ‘clear’ to members of the public who were following Song Gengyi’s saga.
“The Nanjing Massacre has killed more than 300,000 compatriots, and the evidence is as
strong as a mountain. To speculate and question the truth of history is to be a teacher in vain!
To forget the suffering and deny the evil deeds of other countries is to be a countryman in vain!”
“Educators are welcome to seek the truth,
but to speak on behalf of wrongdoers and disregard the suffering of the nation?
How can such ignorance and virtue be worthy of guiding the next generation?”
Wow. Imagine a state-run newspaper coming after you, as an individual teacher.
After this, Song Gengyi even received nasty threats over text.
Of course, authorities were right when they said Song’s lecture “caused serious adverse
social impacts”—but only because of how they handled it. I’ll explain after the break.
Welcome back.
Shortly after the video of Song Gengyi went viral,
so did a 27-year old elementary school teacher named Li Tiantian from Xiangxi,
Hunan province . Li received a lot of attention for a social media post she wrote supporting Song.
“I support Teacher Song. I do not want to be the silent majority.
As a colleague, I think there is no problem with her lectures. The problems are her students,
the school that expelled her, official reports, and silent intellectuals.”
“Song Gengyi’s words did not instigate or provoke, nor did she oppose or obliterate the
Nanjing Massacre. She only proposed to respect lives and respect the dead. Is this wrong?”
Obviously those things were wrong!
Li Tiantian’s post was deleted from social media. But not soon enough—because a lot
of people had already passed it around. and it started getting the public’s attention.
But Chinese authorities knew just what to do with a teacher
who defended someone else’s freedom of speech.
They sent her to a mental hospital.
Sending people to mental hospitals is one of the ways Chinese authorities
make dissidents go away. And it makes sense, too, because
they assume you’d have to be crazy to go against the Communist Party.
China’s mental health laws allow involuntary admission into mental
hospitals under the consent of police authorities.
In other words, whether you need “psychiatric help”
can be determined by the ministry of public security—not mental health professionals.
That policy is awfully convenient when you want
to paint someone as mentally ill in order to shut them up.
An online user had posted images of Li Tiantian crying for help as she described a group of
people coming in with needle injections, before taking her to the mental hospital.
This text message that circulated online reads,
“I’ve been taken against my will to a mental hospital by the Yongshun Public Security Bureau.
I am contacting you through a phone I hid in my underwear.
Please save me! Can’t talk much, the battery will die soon. Please save me!”
I should also mention that Li Tiantian was four months pregnant during all of this.
This isn’t the first time Li Tiantian had gotten in trouble with authorities.
In 2019, Li had posted online a reflection of her experiences
teaching in a rural village in China, titled, “A Group of Rural Children Being Destroyed.”
In it, she merely criticized how the school was less interested
in educating children than in passing an official inspection.
Nothing in it was particularly political. But it did, in a roundabout way,
point out the true priorities of socialist education with Chinese characteristics.
But her post got a lot of attention at the time. And so Li Tiantian had her teaching
courses reduced, and was required to report to her higher-ups about any travel plans.
This is how censorship works in China. No one knows what or when something will be censored.
And when things make their way to the public eye, the Chinese censorship apparatus panics!
And that sometimes makes it crash and burn. I’ll tell you what happened after the break.
Welcome back.
Chinese netizens were all concerned about Li Tiantian’s disappearance.
But the authorities knew what to do. They got her
family to consent to Li being checked into the hospital for psychiatric treatment.
And wouldn’t you know it, Hu Xijin , the recently retired editor-in-chief
of my favorite state-run media The Global Times, shared a video on Weibo of Li Tiantian’s mother!
You know, there’s something about the way she was speaking that seems...well,
let’s say I sympathize with how hard it is to read off a teleprompter.
And this is yet another tactic used to dissuade dissenters in China.
The authorities in China will find a way to get family members involved,
either by threatening them or demanding that they “refute rumors.”
A week later, on December 26th,
a Weibo post allegedly from Li Tiantian was released to the public.
“Hello everyone, I am Li Tiantian. I just came out of the ‘hospital’, I will reply to
everyone as soon as possible. Thank you for your concern for me and your attention to this matter!”
“Now, my condition is still ‘recovering’, and my mental state is also poor,
so I may not be able to reply to too many messages or accept media interviews in a short
time. I hope you will understand. However, Li Tiantian will always be Li Tiantian,
and words are the embodiment of my spirit and personality.”
She put the words ‘hospital’ and ‘recovering’ in quotation marks? That is not reassuring.
Comments on social media are also doubtful.
“Li Tiantian is not mentally ill! I hope that she will speak up
as soon as possible and return to normal!”
“A certain group of people wants to say that Li Tiantian is not mentally ill,
and should not be put in a mental hospital. The other group wants to
say that Li Tiantian is mentally ill, so as to justify her support of Song Gengyi.”
“Do they really think claims of mental illness
will wash away what she said about the Nanjing Massacre?”
And here’s what’s ironic: By making a big deal about Song Gengyi asking questions about the
Nanjing Massacre, and locking up Li Tiantian for supporting her, China’s censorship apparatus
turned it into a popular discussion topic. And now a lot of people are asking inconvenient questions.
The Chinese Communist Party is going to have to open a lot of new mental hospitals.
And now it’s time for me to answer an inconvenient question from one of you—a
fan who supports China Uncensored on Patreon or Locals.
Tyler How on Patreon asks: “What would happen if Russia invades Ukraine and China invades Taiwan at
the same time? Could this work in their favor to split the distribution of US military personnel?”
Um...please don’t give Russia and China any ideas. One invasion is a normal war.
But coordinated invasions on different parts of the globe? That could be the
start of a *world* war. And I think humanity has had enough of those, thank you very much.
Thanks for your question, Tyler.
Be like Tyler, and support China Uncensored with a dollar or more per episode on Patreon.
Or become a paying subscriber on Locals.
In each place, you get different perks. But in both,
you can ask me questions I’ll answer on the show.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.