Defying China's censors to urge Beijing to denounce Russia's war against Ukraine

A woman looks through the rubble of a residential complex after it was hit by a strike in Kyiv on March 18, 2022. PHOTO: NYTIMES

BEIJING (NYTIMES) - When Mr Hu Wei, a politically well-connected scholar in Shanghai, warned that China risked becoming a pariah if it did not denounce Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he ignited a war of words on China's Internet.

Some readers praised Mr Hu's article, which spread online last week, seeing its gloomy prognosis about China becoming isolated behind a new Iron Curtain of hostility from Western countries as a welcome challenge to official Chinese soft-pedalling of President Vladimir Putin's aggression.

Many others denounced him as a stooge of Washington, unduly critical of Russia's war aims and prospects. The Chinese authorities blocked the website of US-China Perception Monitor, on which his article first appeared, and tried to censor it on social media.

Inside China, the war in Ukraine "has ignited enormous disagreements, setting supporters and opponents at polar extremes", Mr Hu wrote. His own stance was clear: "China should not be yoked to Putin and must sever itself from him as soon as it can."

Mr Hu's article has been the most striking instance of rising opposition to Russia's assault on an independent neighbour and rebukes of Beijing for its reluctance to criticise Moscow.

The criticism at home comes as Beijing faces increasing pressure abroad from the United States and European governments to use its influence over Russia to help stop the war.

On Friday (March 18), China's leader, Mr Xi Jinping, spoke with President Joe Biden, a call in which the American leader warned Mr Xi that supporting Russia's aggression would have unspecified "implications and consequences".

In China, where the authorities tightly police and punish speech both online and offline, public opinion appears largely sympathetic to Mr Putin.

Yet despite the risks, some citizens have been voicing criticisms - in quips on social media ridiculing Mr Putin and his nationalist devotees in China; in scathing online comments responding to official statements; and in essays laying out the moral, political and economic costs of the war not just for Russia but also its partner, China.

"We have never had any commentary that attracted so much attention," said Dr Yawei Liu, editor of the US-China Perception Monitor, referring to Mr Hu's article.

The Chinese version of the article attracted 300,000 views on the Monitor's website and millions more from being shared on Chinese social media, Mr Liu said in a telephone interview from Atlanta, where the online journal is based.

"There is overwhelming support for the China-Russia partnership and overwhelming support for Putin's war against Ukraine," he said of Chinese opinion. "But the political, academic and economic elite are different. There is this real worry."

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Feb 4, 2022. PHOTO: AFP

Chinese critics of the war include academics with a foothold in the political establishment, like Mr Hu, who are usually shielded from the worst pressure. He is a professor in Shanghai's school for Communist Party officials and a vice-president of a public policy centre under the State Council, the Chinese Cabinet of government ministers. He declined to be interviewed.

Chinese censors have tried to snuff out the sharpest criticisms. People have also come under pressure from the authorities for expressing their opposition to the war.

In recent days, Chinese officials warned many among some 130 alumni of Chinese universities who had signed a petition against the war, said Mr Lu Nan, a retired businessman in New York who helped organise the campaign. The petition, also signed by alumni living abroad, had declared that Russia's invasion was an "affront to the bottom line of human conscience".

"Every single one was taken for tea," Mr Lu said in a telephone interview, using a common euphemism referring to being questioned by police. The Chinese government was nervous, he said, because "it's tied to Russia's war chariot and knows that this is very dangerous".

Still, critics continue to speak out, suggesting that a significant number of people are so alarmed by the war that they are willing to defy the censors. Despite the censorship, plenty of dissenting views have been kept alive by readers on social media platforms like Weibo and WeChat. Most of those speaking out are political liberals also opposed to China's deepening authoritarianism and nationalism under Mr Xi.

Other Chinese opponents of the war are near its front line. Some Chinese residents in Ukraine are trying to break through the censorship back home to give their compatriots an unvarnished chronicle of life under fighting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb 4, 2022. PHOTO: REUTERS

Mr Wang Jixian, one of the most popular of these video chroniclers, posts regular dispatches from his apartment or the streets in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa, where he lives. His posts often start with air raid sirens, a howling reminder of how the attacks put civilians' lives in danger.

Mr Wang said he spent hours every day debating Chinese supporters of the war who see him on WeChat and other social media platforms. By Friday, his WeChat video channel was erased.

Of half a million comments on Ukraine over the past two months on Weibo, a Chinese social media service, about half blamed the war on Ukraine, the US or "the West" in general, according to research by Stanford University political scientist Jennifer Pan and other researchers from there and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

About one-tenth blamed Russia or Mr Putin.

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That critical minority in China, though, includes academics and professionals whose views carry more weight. Opposition from the elite may eventually seep into government policy deliberations, encouraging Beijing to shift away from Mr Putin, especially if Russia's assault suffers more setbacks.

"When I talk to Chinese scholars, they are very critical of Putin; they're critical of Russia; they're critical of the invasion," said Mr Paul Haenle, a former director for China on the National Security Council in both the Bush and Obama administrations, who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

China, Mr Haenle said, "can't move maybe as quickly as they would like. But many of them say they're going to distance themselves over time".

Still, Mr Xi appears committed to staying close to Russia, even as China has sought to dissociate itself from the attack on Ukraine. The increasingly centralised decision-making process in Beijing has meant that even prominent scholars do not have the same access as under previous leaders.

If Russia's war and the ensuing Western sanctions drag down China's economic growth, leaders in Beijing could become more receptive to the warnings from Chinese scholars, Mr Liu from the US-China Perception Monitor said.

"To hang yourself on the Russian tree, I think that's like committing suicide, at least economic suicide," he said.

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