Censorship was used as a strategy against the capitalist influence. We must acknowledge that imperialistic powers develop a lot of strategies for culturally influencing population under socialist regimes, to turn them against socialism.

This range from public initiatives, like Radio Free Europe/Asia to undercover financing of dissidents, false flag operations and even training and supporting terrorists groups, like Al Qaeda. Today, financing think tanks is a commons strategy too.

We can see a lot of this methods on Venezuela right now.

Understanding the reasons is not equal to supporting censorship. But acknowledging them move us to find better ways do protect socialist regimes from imperialist propaganda. It’s very naïve to think a socialist attempt can survive imperialist propaganda without defense mechanisms.

Here’s a great answer by /u/stormthegates on reddit w/ regards to China:

I will attempt to give you a principled answer, I apologize if this comes off as a bit harsh, its not aimed at you. Some of this answer is based on the MLM Mayhem blog. Ill separate this answer into two categories, “societal free speech” (the ability of people to express their attitudes towards societal situations) and “economic free speech” (the ability of people to express their attitudes towards economic/labor situations)

I dislike the vague idea of “free speech”, I find it a real weasel word used by Westerners. The real practical question divorced from fanciful liberal ideas of “equality” that communists should be concerned with is “Whose Speech and For Whom?” . It is not hard to get the impression that, in the liberal moral universe, censorship is more evil than allowing people to starve because they cannot afford food. This is because, in the liberal view of things, society progresses because of the supposed “openness” of a Millsian marketplace of ideas––just like capitalism and its invisible hand!

As communists we know that is not true, society moves dialectically. Additionally, we do not seek to champion the right of the powerful and bigoted to express themselves. We should have no problem repressing oppressive language or those that utilize it. Patriarchal, white supremacist, cissupremacist, homophobic, or otherwise oppressive speech need not be tolerated. Oppressive speech supports authority where it is undue (for example: the authority of white people over black people, of men over women). We should reject the liberal accusations of authoritarianism based on China’s stance against oppressive speech. Work absolutely continues on this front, much of China remains rural and isolated with deeply ingrained beliefs that are not always anti-oppressive in nature.

Now when it comes to economic free speech things get a bit thornier. Right out of the gate I am going to say that I have no problem suppressing capitalists and capitalist roadsters from spreading ideas of economic liberalization/privatization. The USSR proves the historical necessity to do so. The necessity of the vanguard party (CCP) has also been historically proven.

At the moment the CPC just reached 90 million members. It is by far the largest political entity on the planet. All of those members have the ability to express their positions and ideas on party direction (within you know, the bounds of whats acceptable and still being considered a communist). The legacy of colonialism is not so distant, we should be wary of most groups who promote a return to “freedom” and the “old ways” (like the type hanging up British colonial flags in the HK parliament), and who are unwilling to work through the CCP workers party mechanisms. Realistically speaking though, its safe to assume that there are some abuses and oversights however, its a country of 1.2 billion people, its bound to happen. The important question remains which class is in ascendancy and who controls the levers of power.

In any case, all of this free-speech-is-the-highest-good liberal garbage is something I’ve found repellent for a very long time. As a communist I don’t care about the supposed “free speech” of reactionaries: in a revolutionary situation, many of the committed reactionaries who want to protect their hate speech will get themselves killed fighting on the side of the ruling class; the rest should be forced into reeducation programs. This is just the logic of class truth, a logic that should echo the logical context of other historical truths: we don’t allow astrologers to teach in astronomy departments at universities, after all, so why should we allow counter-revolutionaries any autonomy in revolutionary spaces?

There is no freedom and no speech that is outside of class struggle. To demand the freedom of the oppressed and global majority is to demand the removal of the freedom of the oppressor to oppress; to demand the free expression of the oppressed classes is to also demand the suppression of reactionary anti-person “free” expression.

One last thing. I generally try to avoid finger pointing at the West as a way of counter-argument, but I think I should mention. Western media is extremely lacking in freedom. Oh sure, you can say whatever you want to nobody at all, but as soon as you begin to challenge the system or glean a following you are summarily destroyed. The Smith Act trials in the 40s, or the execution of Black Panther leadership in the 60s are good examples of this. Liberal notions of “free speech” are essentially “Free until you actually start to challenge our system and convince people we might be wrong”. Its important to remember that multibillion dollar media empires run by capitalists will always take a Sinophobic stance against Chinese worker controlled media.

Hopefully that was a somewhat satisfactory answer to your question.