Home GRASP GRASP/China Odd inclusions on Chinese censors’ crude Cambridge University Press blacklist

Odd inclusions on Chinese censors’ crude Cambridge University Press blacklist

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List may have been hastily compiled to send a message, observers say
Chinese censors seemed to have compiled an inconsistent blacklist of articles for Britain-based Cambridge University Press (CUP) to pull from its mainland China online platform, researchers said on Monday.
By late on Monday, CUP had decided to reverse its previous decision and would repost the articles immediately, Tim Pringle, editor of London-based ­ The China Quarterly, said.
The publisher confirmed late last week that more than 300 academic articles from The China Quarterly were blocked on the mainland at the request of the General Administration of Press and Publication.
Cambridge University Press reverses decision to block banned articles in China
The administration sent the list to CUP via a book importer, according to Pringle.
Most of the banned papers touched on subjects like the Cultural Revolution, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
But Shakhar Rahav, from the University of Haifa in Israel, said he was surprised to find his 2012 article about Wang Meng, a former culture minister and a well-respected author on the mainland, on the censored list.
Editor fears chilling effect after articles blocked in China
Although the piece focused on events in the wake of Tiananmen, which was mentioned in the article’s headline, it was not critical of the government, he said.
“This is not a systematic block of all the problematic articles, ” Rahav said. “It is more like a symbolic act: censoring a few keywords and sending some signals abroad.”
Also on the blacklist was a review of The Man on Mao’s Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China’s Foreign Ministry, a memoir by Mao Zedong’s interpreter and former ambassador to Britain Ji Chaozhu.

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