> “We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said in its statement in Chinese, which was translated by CNBC.

I normally find the "hate speech is free speech" argument to be pretty tiring, but it's also true that once you start carving exemptions to free speech you can easily carve one out that says "criticizing the government is like hate speech", and then you can justify anything.