Opinion | From Singapore to the US, overseas Chinese are increasingly fearful of criticising Beijing. Is this what China wants?
Audrey Jiajia Li’s harrowing experience of being shouted down by a fellow Chinese for her ‘negative’ views of China, at a recent conference in Singapore, reflects a disturbing trend of Chinese abroad being spied on, reported and vilified for their critical views of their home country
As the panel concluded, a woman in the audience, without raising her hand to request permission from the moderator to speak, started to shout at me: “What’s your nationality? Are you Chinese? What university did you study at?”
The seemingly irrelevant questions baffled the audience. She then identified herself as a professor at one of the “top universities” in China, and went on to lecture me on the journalistic principles she said she preached to her students: “be objective”, which, by her own words, meant focusing on the positive things, not like me (as well as the other panellists who are not from mainland China), who were “negative and too dark”.
Not wanting to add fuel to the fire, I simply responded by saying that I was indeed a Chinese citizen, and that I would agree to disagree.
After the panel, dozens of international journalists came over to offer comfort and encouragement. Many were concerned about my safety, as the professor had apparently come to the conference under the arrangement of a government-controlled organisation.
