Perry Link, "How Important is Internet Satire in China?"

The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies hosts a talk with Perry Link on the importance of the internet in how the public affects the government.

How Important is Internet Satire in China?

Perry Link, University of California, Riverside

Beginning in the late 1950s,the harshness of late Maoism brought to Chinese society a bifurcation of language–clearer and sharper than it is in most other societies­–between official and unofficial language. People spoke one way at home and among friends, and another way in public contexts. Public language, right to its grammar, fit with the political interests of the ruling authority. The Internet, though, breaks this pattern. It is the first medium in PRC history in which unofficial talk is made public and survives there, despite efforts at repression. This important fact has implications for how people organize, how they bring pressure, and even how they conceive what it means to be a Chinese person.

Perry Link spent 1962 to 1972 at Harvard, studying Western philosophy and then Chinese history. For most of his career he taught Chinese language and literature at Princeton, and now is Chancellorial Chair for Teaching across Disciplines at the University of California, Riverside. He has published in fields of modern Chinese language, literature, intellectual history, popular culture, and politics. He has been denied entry to China since 1996. His latest book is /An Ana//tomy of Chinese: Rhyth//m, Metaphor, Politics/ (2013).