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What do Winnie the Pooh, an image of an empty chair, and Justin Bieber have in common? They all have been recently banned by Chinese censors. BBCreportedthat China banned Winnie the Pooh from its social media sites because bloggers have been comparing him to Chinas President Xi Jinping.

Since the late NobelLaureateLiu Xiaobos death, Chinese WhatsApp userscomplainedthat Chinese censors blocked their attempts to send images of an empty chair to commemorate Liu inreal time. Last but not least, Chinese Bieber fans weretoldrecently by Beijings Culture Bureau that the Canadian pop star is banned from having concerts in China due to his past bad behaviors which caused public dissatisfaction. Thus banning him is necessary to purify Chinas domestic entertainment scene.

Id never imagined that Winnie the Pooh, an image of an empty chair, and Justin Bieber would all become symbols of liberty one day. For the last 30 years, while the daily lives of Chinese citizens have dramatically improved, their opportunities for free speech, assembly, and expression havent. Chinas wealth enables the Chinese government to control information flow, promote propaganda, and monitor and suppress dissent much more efficiently and effectively.

With Communist Partys leadership reshuffle getting close, Beijing has stepped up its censorship. Banning Winnie the Pooh and Justin Bieber are small potatoes compared to Chinas latestcrackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs), a popular method Chinese use to bypass Chinese authorities Great Firewall. The most intrusive tool the government deploys is facial recognition technology and iris scanners installed everywhere to keep a watchful eye on the entire Chinese population.

The Wall Street Journalestimatedthat China has 176 million surveillance cameras in public and private hands, and the nation will install about 450 million new ones by 2020. The U.S., by comparison, has about 50 million.Chinas vast, technology-driven surveillance system has made it easier for the state to arrest political dissidents. The all-seeing big brother George Orwell imagined in 1984 has become a reality in China.

During Maos Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Chinese government not only controlled every aspect of each citizens lifewhat to eat, how much to eat, where to live, and what one was supposed to do for a livingbut it also demanded full control of every citizens mind through thought control. Today the Chinese government no longer decide how much people can eat, but the state has even better control over the Chinese peoples minds.

Not all censorship flows from top-down. Many Chinese citizens and businesses have taken cues from the government and censor themselves. Chinas popular video and Internet streaming sitescleanedthemselves up by voluntarily taking down all foreign films and TV shows, replacing them with government-sanctioned propaganda that glorifies the Communist Party in the name of social harmony and patriotism.

One livestream showed a young woman host who dressed in Red Army uniform and filmed herself buying Mao Zedong badges at a gift shop. Chinas information control is so successful that she was probably never told that someone in her family perished during the man-made famine or tortured by Maos Red Guards in similar uniforms only four decades ago. Even if she was told the truth, will it change her self-censored behavior?

The most worrisome part of this whole situation is that while some Chinese reject state thought control (and pay a dear price for their struggle), many not only accept the governments propaganda, but also vigorously defend it. Pew Researchshowsroughly three-quarters (77%) of the [Chinese] public believes that their way of life needs to be protected against foreign influence.

Why should we care whats going on inside China? Because the impact of Chinas censorship and thought-control can be easily felt outside China. Many Chinese overseas echo propaganda like people inside China do. The most famous Chinese Internet troll group, Little Pink, is largely made up of Chinese females both inside and outside China. Theyre notorious for bombardingthe overseas social media of anyone who expresses any negative views about China, even fellow Chinese.

In May this year, Chinese student Yang Shuping gave a commencementspeechat the University of Maryland. She praised the fresh air and freedom of speech in the United States and contrasted it to her experiences growing up in China: wearing a mask to fight air pollution and passively accepting government-authenticated truth. Many Chinese netizens, especially those from Little Pink, called her a traitor who was sucking up to westerners at the expense of belittling her motherland. Many demanded that she apologize, which she did.

Still, her home address was posted online and some Chinese threatened her should she return to China. Even the Chinese government stepped in,withthe spokesperson of Chinas foreign ministry stating all Chinese should behave responsibly in their public statements.The cyber bullying and harsh reaction from China actually proved Yangs point that China lacks freedom of speech and thought.

But its the oversea reaction from Chinese to this student that really shocked me. Some Chinese students did speak out to support her, but it seems their rational reaction was drowned out by criticism. The Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of Maryland quickly put out aproud of China video campaign. Throughmedia interviewsand social media postings, many Chinese students in the United States said Yang was unpatriotic and she embarrassed herself and her motherland by speaking ill of her country in front of a biased western crowd.

I recently experienced such a feverish defense of China in the United States first hand. At the Las Vegas Freedom Fest, one of the largest libertarian gatherings, one of my fellow panelists was a 30-something young man who emigrated from China to the United States when he was 12. Facing a libertarian-conservative audience, he confidently proclaimed that Chinese President Xi is a virtuous leader, Chinas current economic system is laissez faire capitalism, western-style democracy is not suitable for China because of Confucianism, Chinas one-child policy was humane, and people can freely express themselves in China without any repercussions.

It was almost as if he took the talking points from Chinas foreign ministry and just read them. I thought he was telling a joke, but he finished his speech with a straight face. Later during the Q&A, he demonstrated that he believed everything he said by defending his statements unequivocally, despite mountains of evidence provided by other panelists.

If we believe some people inside China defend the government because they dont have access to information due to censorship, or they are doing so out of fear, whats the excuse for oversea Chinese like this young man and those from the Little Pink, who have all the information at their fingertips yet willingly accept and defend lies? They are the latest proof that Cultural Revolution-style censorship and thought control never dies because so many Chinese are willing participants and enforcers. If people like this young man can live among us for so long but stay immune to western ideas of human freedom, what does this say about the strength of our education, culture, values, and ideas, compared to the power of Chinas censorship and propaganda?

The ripple effect of Chinas censorship obviously doesnt stop at Chinas border. We in the west need to not only keep an eye on whats going on inside China, but also be aware how that affects our lives here. Its time we realize that not everyone who comes here and lives among us naturally seeks truth and freedom. Orwell wrote in1984thatThe choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. If we want the bulk of mankind to choose freedom, we have a lot of work to do.

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China's Censorship Powers Are Bigger And More Dangerous Than You Know - The Federalist