By Wong Tai-Chee

In Mainland China and even among the pro-China neitizens of Malaysia and Singapore today, curses of "traitors" and "lackeys" are customarily hurled at people who embrace Western democracy and are against the authoritarianism and oppression of expression freedom in China.

No doubt China's has developed at breakneck pace in economy and military over the past 30 years, prompting Western countries, in particular the United States, to hit out deliberately at China for its oppressive acts — often out of sheer phobia or worry about China's meteoric rise as a reckoned power.

As a consequence, the Chinese leadership has resorted to inciting powerful nationalism and patriotism among the people in neutralizing such assaults. The result is: more and more pro-China netizens begin to exploit the derogatory terms "traitors" and "lackeys" in defending their own positions.

First of all, there is this need to define the meaning of the term "汉奸" (traitor). It was first used to describe Chinese people who betrayed their own ethnicity by providing assistance to foreign invaders in ancient China. In more recent history, the same words were given a heavier national rather than ethnic connotation. For instance, Yoshiko Yamaguchi (Chinese name 李香兰), a Chinese singer who served Japan during the Sino-Japanese war, was sentenced to death after the surrender of the Japanese Imperial Army in 1945 on treason charges, but was later released and repatriated to Japan after she proved her Japanese citizenship.

As for another derogatory term "走狗" (lackey), it is used to describe people who collude with the bad guy to advance their own gain. It usually carries a hint of moral depravity and the inclination to curry favor in order to please one's master.

As such, calling a person "traitor" or "lackey" is fundamentally a debasing act of slander and libel. Nevertheless, as most web users do not use their own names in online forums, it is practically impossible for the victims to pursue legal actions against the culprits.

Being constantly instilled with such state-sponsored patriotic brainwashing, some of the social media users in China have begun to expand the target bases of their cyber offensives to include also public intellectuals.

Generally speaking, a public intellectual possesses certain unique features and boast quite decent academic backgrounds, professional knowledge, and are embracing the universally approved values. They also have independent personal insights, strong critical thinking and spirit of righteousness. To a certain degree, they dare to voice up against government policies and make public their personal views.

They normally do not join any political party in order to secure for themselves lucrative government posts, and are resistant to becoming government mouthpieces. Their principal social responsibility is to inspire the people to think liberally, and strive to shape social discourse in erecting a more rational society.

In China, public intellectuals with a relatively strong sense of self-righteousness will never feel excessively delighted at the anticipation of a "superpower dream" that their country is on the cusp of overtaking the United States. They do not see the humiliation suffered by the Chinese in the past as a consequence of the barbarous acts of Western powers in totality, but the inclusion of a civilizational effect behind such perceived barbarity in inspiring the Chinese people to be more macroscopic.

Besides possessing independent and critical thinking, more importantly public intellectuals must never set politics and public offices as their ultimate goals because once they involve themselves in politics, they will forego their ideals eventually given the onslaught from the realistic environment. They can only retain their critical power as well as impartiality in the society if they stay away from the core of power and commercial interests. They have to constantly alerting themselves before they can do so to the general population, and trigger social conscience from morally deficient politicians.

Sure enough as public intellectuals, they are subjected to gargantuan, often unbearable social pressure for the simple reason the society is least tolerant towards morally depraved public intellectuals.

They cannot afford to champion surveillance over the privileged groups, caring for the underprivileged, and promoting moral integrity and social consciousness on the one hand, but engage in immoral behaviors and collude with corrupt politicians and bribe-giving businessmen to rake in handsome profits on the other hand.

But why should public intellectuals, as a symbol of social conscience, come under the merciless criticism of Chinese web influencers? First of all the boundary of being public intellectual is becoming increasingly obscured. Following the opening up of the Chinese economy during the past four decades, the number of tertiary students each year has been rising steadily. Thanks to universal availability of smartphones in the country in the last ten years or so, we have seen a dramatic rise in online discussions and debates over some of the heated issues, with a multitude of bloggers and Weibo accounts vying for market attention. Some of the new Weibo accounts have even enlisted the help of well-known personalities and public intellectuals to participate in the discussions in a bid to consolidate their social influences.

Naturally, not all public intellectuals are of consistent quality; the same goes for social media users. Anyway, with smartphones a ubiquitous commodity among the Chinese citizenry, and with public intellectuals starting to voice up, it has become the birthright of every social media user to freely respond to the discourse. Any heated topic could make an excellent outlet for the masses to vent their frustration.

The issues raised by public intellectuals could be favorable at times but unfavorable at other times to the authorities. Take for example, when the public intellectuals criticize unfair government policies on behalf of the lowest segment of the society, they are seen as confronting the authorities and the embodiment of social conscience. They may occasionally reveal the truth when the regime is perceived to have covered up some of the facts, thus making them hugely popular among web users.

However, constrained by the "patriotism", if these public intellectuals were to show the slightest sympathy for the pro-democracy moment in Hong Kong as part and parcel of civil rights, they may have to face the eventuality of widespread bashing from web users who will invariably blast extremely harsh curses against him.

In a world inundated with all kinds of misinformation, it is the wish of the general population that public intellectuals will voice up on their behalf, say things they have always wanted to say, and approve of the values they cherish, instead of telling the world how independent, unbiased and reasonable they are!

(Wong Tai-Chee has his B.A and M.A degrees in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Paris, and earned his PhD in Human Geography from the Australian National University. After teaching 20 years in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, he retired in 2013. He then worked as Distinguished Professor for two years at Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, China, and as Dean and Professor at the Southern University College, Johor until the end of 2018. He was Visiting Professor to University of Paris (Sorbonne IV), Visiting Fellow to Pekin University, Tokyo University and University of Western Australia. His main research interests are in urban and economic issues, and more recently on Malaysian politics. Besides his 15 self-authored and edited book volumes, he has written over 100 academic articles and published widely in international journals.)