Take a look at China’s economy, and you might be forgiven for thinking the totalitarian state was shifting away from communism. Since they abandoned the fully centralized economy that led to starvation, and now know that the results are miraculous, you might think they would also start embracing liberty.
Well, China’s not quite there, according to a report from Reuters.
“China’s media regulator is cracking down on video spoofs, the official Xinhua news agency reported, amid an intensified crackdown on any content that is deemed to be in violation of socialist core values under President Xi Jinping,” writes Reuters’ Pei Li and Adam Jourdan.
They continue: “The decision comes after Xi cemented his power at a recent meeting of parliament by having presidential term limits scrapped, and the ruling Communist Party tightened its grip on the media by handing control over film, news and publishing to its powerful publicity department.”
According to Xinhua, the new rule orders video sites to ban videos that “distort, mock or defame classical literary and art works.” The directive comes from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
The West was built on the right to free speech. Well, only one country has embraced that — and other Western countries are now further limiting it.
China is still a totalitarian dictatorship. They’ve simply recognized that certain economic policies allow them to continue as totalitarians for far longer than socialism will. Venezuela is currently suffering the hell that China previously experienced as the inevitable result of a managed economy; China learned that lesson, but nothing else.
China is nowhere close to embracing liberty. As the nation embraces capitalism in an effort to keep its economic engine running smoothly, the people of China will see the rest of the world’s freedoms, and demand all of them. But China will be powerful enough to crush the revolution, just as it did in Tiananmen Square.
Best of luck to the people of China amidst these terrible developments.
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