They pounce on bloggers who dare mock their beloved Chairman Mao. They scour the nation’s classrooms and newspapers for strains of Western-inspired liberal heresies. And they have taken down professors, journalists and others deemed disloyal to Communist Party orthodoxy.
Andrew Jacobs is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times who has been based in Beijing since 2008. Taking a year off from studying Chinese at New York University, Jacobs first stepped foot in...