The lone voices of dissent in China’s political wilderness
Some members of the top advisory body are still willing to say it as they see it despite tighter controls on the media and political ideology
Cui Yongyuan may be a former host on China’s state-run national broadcaster but he is no fan of the country’s news censors.
On Friday, Cui lashed out regulators taking the razor to news coverage and movies. “[The censors] simply block everything they don’t like in a way I would call rude and barbarian … I don’t think they’re helping the Communist Party or the government at all. They are only causing more trouble,” he said.
On the sidelines of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which ended in Beijing on Monday, Cui, a delegate, also took aim at the push to stamp out Western values at the nation’s universities, just three months after Chinese President Xi Jinping called for stronger ideological controls at all tertiary institutions.
Despite political sensitivities ahead of the party’s key gathering later this year and tighter limits on overseas media access to the CPPCC, some of the body’s 2,000 or so delegates, including Cui, are still willing to speak their minds on government policy. They’re just not convinced they’ll be heard.
The CPPCC is nominally the country’s top political advisory body and draws its membership from the ranks of the nation’s writers, academics, scientists and entrepreneurs, among others.