This is clearly evidence that China is the problem. It's exactly what everyone predicted. And it's what I've witnessed in the past few years at scientific conferences. This is how the system puts pressure on outsiders, it gets the locals to explain how dire the consequences would be for them.

15 years ago conferences were legitimately free and everyone felt free. I felt comfortable visiting China.

Now, I get emails asking for slides ahead of time to make we don't say anything. Chinese faculty members show up with minders. I get pleading comments in private to make sure to never say anything political because my hosts would be punished.

Heck, we had to change the ethics section of a paper recently to make my student comfortable in case he plans to return home because employers and the government would hold him accountable for what it said originally. Nothing crazy by the way, nothing even directly mentioning China, just about the general idea of freedom.

15 years later, I don't feel comfortable going to China anymore or letting any of my students go to conferences there anymore.

The only thing you know about Dave McCarty's actions is that he was extremely concerned about the locals. I could have said something in my talk about the Uyghurs and Hong Kong when I was there. And if it was a Chinese funded event in the West I would have. But it would have been my innocent friends and their families who were hosting us at the conference that would have paid the price for that. You're really buying into exactly what the system wants you to think here.