The International Herald Leader, a spin-off publication of China’s official Xinhua News Agency, runs an interview in its latest issue with scholars Yu Jianrong (于建嵘) and Wang Yukai (汪玉凯) in which the two discuss a number of “sensitive issues,” including so-called “stability preservation,” a massive nationwide policy of keeping down individual and mass protest actions by disenfranchised and angry Chinese.
The following remark from Yu Jianrong, a CMP fellow and outspoken critic of many government practices to ensure social stability, begins the International Herald Leader article: “In Chinese society today, too many things, people, topics and moments are regarded as ‘sensitive,’ to the point that just about anything dealing with the people’s welfare is called ‘sensitive.'”