Happy-hour huddles give Chinese students “a place without authority…to speak their mind.”

By Joyce Jiang and James Legge | Contributors: Nectar Gan and Simone McCarthy | CNN

Summary

The rise of academic pubs in China—off-campus happy-hour huddles for university students—represents a significant, albeit fragile, movement towards more open intellectual discourse in a constrained public sphere.

These alcohol-with-academics sessions delve into a range of topics in the humanities and social sciences. They include issues deemed politically sensitive and often censored online, such as feminism, but also more innocuous subjects like social anxiety and cats in ancient Chinese paintings.

As urban, educated youth seek spaces to discuss diverse ideas, the sustainability of this trend will likely be tested against the backdrop of ongoing censorship and state control.

One academic quoted told reporters that in the context of China “any kind of gathering can be perceived as presenting challenges to public security.”

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