A Chinese university professor at the centre of a row over free speech has spoken out again about growing censorship.



Last week internet censors purged an interview given to a leading Chinese magazine by Jiang Hong, a government adviser and academic. The magazine, Caixin, subsequently challenged the government over the incident, in a rare rebuke to the Communist party’s attempts to control the media.

Days later an employee at China’s news and propaganda agency Xinhua criticised censors’ “crude” and “extreme” violations of online freedom of expression. Growing suppression of free speech “has triggered tremendous fear and outrage among the public”, the journalist Zhou Fang claimed in an open letter that was circulated online before itself being deleted by censors.

Jiang, who last week lamented China’s “terrible and bewildering” censorship, continued to speak out against the government’s attempts to control public discourse. In an interview with the BBC, the academic said he was alarmed by a surge in the number of online articles and blogs being deleted.

“If a society only listens to one voice, then mistakes can be made,” Jiang said on the sidelines of China’s annual parliament, the National People’s Congress, which concluded on Wednesday. “A good way to prevent this from happening is to let everyone speak up, to give us the whole picture.”

The recent rise in censorship had “made people worried about expressing their opinions”, added Jiang, who teaches at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

The free speech row comes as China swings back towards what some political observers describe as a “hard authoritarian” model of governance in which dissent is stifled.

Since Xi Jinping became Communist party chief in late 2012, human rights lawyers, bloggers, feminists, journalists, academics and, most recently, labour activists have all been targeted in what appears to be a coordinated attempt to silence criticism.



Many observers believe Beijing’s determination to bring its opponents to heel reflects growing concern among the leadership about the state of the Chinese economy.

On Wednesday the prime minister, Li Keqiang, admitted his government was grappling with “deep-seated” economic problems but expressed optimism about China’s longer-term prospects.

“We have full confidence in the bright future of China’s economy. Our confidence is not built on flimsy ground. We feel so confident because we believe that as long as we stay on the course of reform and opening up, China’s economy will not suffer a hard landing,” Li said at a highly choreographed two-hour press conference at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.



“There are both difficulties and hopes for China’s economy but … there are more hopes than difficulties,” Li added.



However, there are mounting concerns about the potential for unrest as the economy loses steam after years of double-digit growth, and the number of strikes balloons.



Last weekend thousands of miners poured on to the streets in China’s north-eastern rust belt to protest against unpaid wages, some holding placards that read: “We want to live, we want to eat.”

Jiang, the outspoken government adviser, said he was troubled that as a result of censorship he was unable to express his concerns over free speech to the Chinese public. “In this aspect, there’s still a lot of improvement needed in our country,” he told the BBC.