| This aligns very closely to my understanding of the issue.
I think the key missing piece here is the content of the offensive political cartoon. Out of curiosity I went looking for Taiwan and HK political cartoons. The first hit I found was: https://twitter.com/hkguy1988/status/1294855101631180806/pho... Now, I want to be clear: I have no idea if this is the actual cartoon in question, but I could see it being criticized in all ways the mystery cartoon in question is criticized, while also being fodder to someone who is deeply frustrated with the PRC government w.r.t. its handling of SARS-CoV-2 and has no particular bones to pick in the domain of anti-Chinese racism. So, yeah, in terms of this individuals experience and treatment, I think it's critical to know what the comic was. Especially, if we're going to choose not to trust the judgement of the publisher that this person had been treated unfairly. The details of this series of incidents notwithstanding, I believe that The West needs to come to a consensus about how to deal with PRC influence on scholarly thought and debate. Further, I expect we're going to have to come to terms with it being costly to do so, with international subsidies being required to ensure no aligned institution is forced to compromise its scholarly criticism for survival. |