Summary
“Academic pubs” are emerging as rare spaces for intellectual discussion in China’s major cities, allowing young, educated urbanites to discuss sensitive social and political topics in casual settings despite increasing censorship.
Inspired by similar Western trends, these events feature Chinese scholars and address topics from feminism to social science, often tackling ideas avoided in traditional academic environments.
However, concerns grow over their longevity due to China’s tightening restrictions on public discourse and cultural expression.
Organizers remain cautious, balancing openness with self-censorship to avoid political repercussions.
Next week:
“Beijing announces outlawing of ‘academic pub’ spaces in major metropolitan areas”Yes, but they have to completely suppress any dissenting speech in order to fight Western imperialism and complete the communist revolution that Marx definitely says requires them to go through an incredibly corrupt neo-capitalist phase first.
Or so people with lemmy.ml in their username suggest to me on a regular basis.
Interesting how this resembles what I was taught in school about the roles that coffeeshops played in the European “Enlightenment”.
