Published August 9th, 2006 by Future Atlas
China: trend — expanding freedom
China continues to present a paradox: it is an authoritarian state in which freedom is steadily growing.
The Washington Post here reveals a specialized aspect of the expansion of Chinese freedom, the Chinese punk rock scene.
Social “deviance” and kinds of dissent that were imprisonable offenses a couple of decades ago are now outside the interest of the state. Complains a rocker, “We want to be a dangerous band, like Fugazi or The Clash or Bob Dylan. But because the government doesn’t care about us, we are not forbidden from playing. Maybe we are not dangerous. It’s sad.”
The boundary of permissible freedom continues to move. The question will be whether that boundary will shift organically, regardless of the wishes of the Party and the government it controls, or whether a breaking point will be reached when the Party attempts to hold the line.
It does seem significant that the closest analogues to China, Taiwan and South Korea, took about 50 years to achieve democracy, and at time during that process both were in some respects more socially repressive than China is now.