Daniel A. Bell, an accomplished and careful political theorist, has an article in the most recent issue of Dissent, "Teaching Political Theory in Beijing."  He has spent some time in Singapore and makes some interesting comparisons between the PRC and the Lion City:

The willingness to put up with political constraints depends partly
upon one’s history. In my case, I had taught at the National University
of Singapore in the early 1990s. There, the head of the department was
a member of the ruling People’s Action Party. He was soon replaced by
another head, who asked to see my reading lists and informed me that I
should teach more communitarianism (the subject of my doctoral thesis)
and less John Stuart Mill. Naturally, this made me want to do the
opposite. Strange people would show up in my classroom when I spoke
about “politically sensitive” topics, such as Karl Marx’s thought.
Students would clam up when I used examples from local politics to
illustrate arguments. It came as no surprise when my contract was not
renewed.

In comparison, China is a paradise of academic freedom. Among
colleagues, anything goes (in Singapore, most local colleagues were
very guarded when dealing with foreigners). Academic publications are
surprisingly free: there aren’t any personal attacks on leaders or open
calls for multiparty rule, but particular policies, such as the
household registry system, which limits internal mobility, are subject
to severe criticism. In 2004, state television, for the first time in
history, broadcast the U.S. presidential elections live, without any
obvious political slant. (I suspect that the turmoil surrounding the
2000 U.S. presidential elections, along with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq, discredited U.S.-style democracy among many Chinese, and the
government has less to fear from the model.) More surprisingly,
perhaps, I was not given any explicit (or implicit, as far as I could
tell) guidance regarding what I could teach at Tsinghua. My course
proposals have been approved as submitted.

    Not many comparisons would highlight the PRC as a "paradise of academic freedom."   He goes on:

I did have one experience with censorship imposed from outside. I gave
an interview to a Chinese newspaper that is widely read in intellectual
circles. The interview dealt with China’s role in international
affairs, and I made some critical comments about the U.S.-led invasion
of Iraq that were published. However, I also made some comments about
the ancient thinker Mencius—I argued that he justified “punitive
expeditions” that were functionally similar to modern-day humanitarian
interventions—that were not published. The Chinese government does not
support any infringements on state sovereignty, and the newspaper
probably worried that readers would draw implications for contemporary
debates. To my surprise, the editor of the newspaper phoned me to
apologize, explaining that the article was “reviewed” by a party cadre
and that he had no hand in the matter. He also offered to publish the
interview in full in an academic publication that would not be subject
to the same sorts of constraints. In Singapore, by contrast, it is hard
to imagine that the editor of the pro-government Straits Times
would apologize to contributors whose views were censored: public
humiliation is a more common tactic for dealing with those who do not
toe the party line.

 Maybe the stakes are higher in Singapore because there it is less a matter of maintaining ideological consistency, and more a matter of rationalizing dynastic rule…