I’ve had a question that has puzzled me for a long time: why have university students in the US (such as at Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University) and tens of thousands of students across dozens of states launched large-scale movements to support Palestine and oppose the US, while China remains eerily silent? I think a very important reason is that China enforces fascist-style white terror—any protests are immediately suppressed, objectively creating an environment that does not allow for democratic protests like those in the US. This can also be seen in some news reports: some Chinese students do display the Palestinian flag and shout slogans of support after exams, but they are quickly controlled, with security guards and police confiscating the flags, and domestic reports are swiftly censored. China’s fascist authoritarianism even forbids actions that merely express anti-invasion sentiments or support for Palestine without directly opposing its rule. This shows how much they fear students awakening politically and how afraid they are of people directly expressing political intentions on the streets. However, from online reports, these actions by Chinese students are small and scattered, not large-scale movements, but individual acts, and they are quite weak. I saw a video where a student was about to display the Palestinian flag after leaving the exam hall but was immediately confiscated by security, and the student hardly resisted. Moreover, unlike the anti-American and anti-Israeli stance of US students, these Chinese students sometimes display both the Palestinian and Chinese flags simultaneously, emphasizing patriotism. This is related to their inability to see through the false aid and true control behind China’s so-called support for Palestine, but I think it’s also connected to their fear of not being supported by the government, hence emphasizing patriotism.
But I still have a question: although the different levels of political activism between Chinese and American students are related to the domestic political environment—China’s white terror stifling democratic movements and public political consciousness—both China and the US are reactionary and decayed imperialist countries. Why do Chinese university students (especially those at prestigious universities) tend to indulge in pleasure, selfishness, and indifference to current affairs, while even top US universities see student movements willing to sacrifice graduation opportunities? Additionally, many faculty and professors in these schools also participate in these movements and openly oppose the schools. Why is that? Are they not bourgeois or part of the bourgeoisie?
Chinese social and cultural life is too decayed; the entire society is filled with the spiritual opium of fascism. Among all students, I believe Chinese university students are the most spiritually decayed group, most detached from labor, with the strongest aristocratic spirit, and most closely aligned with bourgeois culture. Many high school and middle school students, although also heavily influenced by spiritual opium, often have to endure the oppression and slavery of capitalist society for the sake of advancing their studies, and many have not yet formed a very firm reactionary stance. They are also more likely to develop sympathetic feelings towards the working people.
Indeed, that’s the case. When I was in middle school, I also felt a lot of oppression from the academic institutions, so based on the pain of my own situation, I sympathized with many videos and issues on the internet that reflected the suffering of the working people. However, what mainly puzzles me is what the difference is between the ideological and cultural decadence of the American imperialists and the revisionists in China, and why American imperialist students show such strong militancy, especially university students in higher education institutions.
Supporters of Palestine students and protesters occupy Columbia University library, NYPD conducts mass arrests after clashes
Approximately 100 protesters broke through campus police barricades and occupied the library, renaming it “Basel Alaraj People’s University,” to protest the university’s continued support for American—Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people and the suppression of student protesters. The demands included: “Abolish support for Zionist occupation, apartheid, and genocide; academic boycott of all accomplice institutions, including canceling the Tel Aviv Global Center, and expelling police and immigration officers from campus; end Columbia University’s occupation of Harlem; return the land to the people of Harlem and open the gates!” and “Pardon all students, faculty, staff, and workers disciplined by Columbia University.”
U.S. “public safety personnel” besieged and attacked protesters for up to 3 hours, locking the library doors and subjecting them to beatings and suffocation, with only a few protesters complying, showing ID, and leaving. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the building during the police blockade, surrounding the police and demanding they allow students inside to leave, while fighting with police and attempting to enter the building to rescue trapped demonstrators. The police later carried out mass arrests, during which the crowd outside the occupied library surged from 50 to over 200 people, surrounding the prison bus and NYPD patrol cars carrying the arrested. NYPD attacked the crowd, forcibly clearing a path for the police cars to leave, while the crowd cheered for the detainees. During the incident, at least one protester was injured when their arm was injured while being carried out of the building, and another received treatment inside the occupied building; injuries were not disclosed. After the arrests, at least three protesters were taken to the emergency room.
In fact, so-called “democratic countries” also engage in fascist repression; democracy and fascism are two sides of the same coin under the bourgeois dictatorship. Not only the American imperialists, but the French imperialist police have also directly raided private homes to arrest independent journalists supporting Palestine. Other countries also send police to suppress protests and even classify “political dissent” (mainly targeting support for Palestine) as illegal.
I wonder if it is because the historical development of capitalism in European and American countries, compared to the Chinese revisionists, the rise of the Chinese revisionist group is the result of overthrowing the socialist state and restoring the regime. Therefore, the Chinese revisionists have always harbored the deepest hatred for socialism and revolutionary masses, and any democratic demands are met with brutal fascist suppression. Conversely, any mass resistance is different from peaceful petitions; it is bound to shake their ruling foundation. So, in order to consolidate their rule, they must dredge up the most reactionary Confucianism from the heap of historical garbage as a foundation, and when educating the new generation of people’s children, they instill reactionary theories such as reading and becoming officials, quickly manufacturing spiritual opium to corrupt minds, suffocating class struggle, so that students, before even coming into contact with society, have already become selfish individuals who watch others’ suffering with indifference. The思想 of bourgeois liberalism is the main content these European and American students are exposed to during their education. Unlike the Chinese revisionists who build firewalls and maintain stability to hide the truth, frequent strikes and demonstrations are almost common events that European and American students are often exposed to or directly participate in, carrying such a tradition. However, although these political activities can be conducted, their demands, propositions, and effects are another matter altogether.
Indeed, indeed, it feels like dialectics; in a revisionist fascist country like China, which completely lacks any democratic atmosphere, what is cultivated instead are the most revolutionary ideas that directly threaten the ruling class.
This requires investigating the specific situations of university students in China and the United States. Chinese university students are definitely more parasitic than American university students, and they are also more detached from the working people. This hasn’t changed much since before they entered university. Chinese students are almost forcibly confined to academic institutions during middle and high school, with almost no contact with working people. In their eyes, working people are seen as low-quality, morally corrupt lazy individuals, as described by their parents and elders. Bourgeois intellectuals and even bourgeois celebrities who spread spiritual opium are regarded by them as superior to working people. This is all influenced by the revisionist propaganda promoting the idea that studying leads to official positions. The previous “fat cat” incident is an example: Chinese university students would rather order a large amount of takeout for a dead man who failed to pursue expensive goods, wasting a lot of food and tormenting sanitation workers and service workers, than shed a tear for overworked workers. Instead, they applauded when service workers packing empty takeout boxes were fired, showing who they consider more “superior.” In contrast, due to the struggles of working people in the U.S., the control pressure from academic institutions is less intense, so the situation is relatively better. Chinese universities do not completely allow students to indulge freely; in recent years, universities have gradually become more like high schools—not academically, but in various seemingly minor ways, such as prohibiting the installation of bed curtains and setting curfews. This restricts students’ relative freedom to indulge but prevents broad social contact. American universities have stricter academic controls than Chinese universities, but students often work part-time in various places, having more contact with working people and thus are not extremely parasitic. The protests by American university students against Israel’s aggression on Palestine occurred at the same time as Chinese university students were defending the “fat cat.”
These liberals don’t take the forum as a place where they can freely defecate, urinate, and insult like Free Asia, do they? It’s really polluting the environment.
This discussion just now reminded me of a small booklet written by Japanese left-wing students studying in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, titled “Is the Soviet Union a Socialist Country?” It discussed the indifference of Soviet revisionist students towards the Vietnam War. I remember it mentioned that Vietnamese students at Moscow University wanted to hold a solidarity rally on campus because the Soviet students’ indifference had a poor effect. It also criticized the toxic influence of American imperialism that poisoned Soviet students at the time (such as rock music, pop music, gangster movies, etc.). Looking back now, the Chinese revisionists have completely inherited the baggage of the Soviet revisionists, and the students of both countries have truly become the same.