Bara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet.

Published Jan. 20, 2011 | Editorial of Peking University News

The real, radical cure for the censorship would be its abolition; for the institution itself is a bad one, and institutions are more powerful than people.

This quote comes from, nobody else but, Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-83).

169 years later, a specter is haunting Peking University – a specter of this particular institution.

Unlike the decree reproved in the Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction (1842), which targeted the press, the PKU mechanism of 2011, however, is on the printing machine.

As the Global Times reported and PKU student journalists confirmed on Wednesday, local police have banned the photocopying of sensitive documents on campus since the New Year, probably as part of their comprehensive control campaign.

Here, “sensitive” means that “materials that express hate against the Party, the State, or the social politics are forbidden,” read the order enforced by the Yanyuan Police Station and PKU Security Department.

If Johannes Gutenberg knew how the offspring of his invention of press here is like, he would possibly have never originated his historic method of printing.

And if Cai Yuanpei – late President of PKU (1916-26) – lived today, he would definitely rather have stayed in German territory, weeping and praying that Gutenberg or Marx would prefer to get his message out: freedom of thoughts, and an all-embracing attitude (Sixiang ziyou, jianrong bingbao).

The order brings us dead back to the 16^th century, when the Roman Catholic Church began to publish the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of books once forbidden by the authority as dangerous to the faith or morals of Roman Catholics. Materials in circulation were a source of concern as early as the scriptural account of the burning of superstitious books at Ephesus by the new converts of St. Paul (Acts 19:19).

Publication of the list ceased in 1966, but its publicity has been broadcast for 300 years, as Milton in his Areopagitica (1644) criticized the censorship:

Printed materials “are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are.”

And 367 years later, the police and security officers on campus are to kill human minds – and human beings.

Overwhelmingly deadly sensitive (Cartoon via the Internet)

The Constitution, laws, and policies of the People's Republic never entitle them to arbitrarily confiscate the printing machines, either.

Worse, the “legal basis” or excuse they have given, blasphemes the Core Values of Peking University.

“(G)uarantee the people's rights to be informed, to participate, to be heard (biaoda quan, or to express), and to oversee,” said President Hu Jintao in the Report to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

It is, therefore, the Yanyuan Police Station and Peking University Security Department themselves that should be censored, according to their own principles.

Extended Reading:

Sensitive Photocopies Banned at PKU

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