By Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, August 24: Following the decision of the world’s oldest publisher to remove ‘sensitive contents’ from its website in China and subsequently restoring them after facing backlashes, the Beijing Book Fair also saw numerous cases of ‘self-censorship’ to avoid any objection from the government.
The controversial move of Cambridge University Press (CUP) saw them remove 300 articles and reviews from the ‘China Quarterly’ website in China at the behest of the Chinese government. The removed articles include government sensitive issues such as ‘the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre’, Cultural Revolution and policies related to Tibetan and Uighur ethnic minorities.
“So it is in publishers’ interest to not publish something that would anger authorities. You don’t mention the three ‘Ts’: Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan. But it’s usually fine to discuss human rights issues generally,” said John Lowe, Managing Director of Mosaic8, an Asian educational publishing specialist based in Tokyo.
CUP present at the fair stated that the censorship issue has not affected their activities at the fair. However, other publishing houses have expressed slight concern over the matter.
“Currently, we don’t have any problems, but in the future, we don’t know,” said Ding Yueting, a marketer for Wiley, an educational publisher and research service based in New Jersey.
Similarly, a representative of another major American publisher on condition of anonymity, said, “It would be embarrassing to go through the trouble of translating a book from English to Chinese, and then being unable to publish in China.”
Terry Phillips, Business Development Director of British-based Innova Press, admitting to self-censorship of avoiding ‘sensitive topics’ off the books, said, “We frequently exercise self-censorship to adapt to different markets. Every country has different sets of requirements about what they consider appropriate for education materials.”
He, however, admits that authors have the responsibility to ‘find ways to teach good citizenship and human rights’.
The books ban by the Chinese government might not to be a total bust for the business since such ban become ‘major selling point’ of the book.
