Editor of censored journal says China’s president is far less pragmatic about dissenting views than his predecessors, as some academics vow to boycott CUP
The censorship row involving the world’s oldest publishing house and its most powerful one-party state has exposed the increasingly authoritarian turn China has taken under Xi Jinping, the editor of the journal at the centre of the controversy has said.
Criticism of Cambridge University Press intensified on Sunday over its controversial decision to comply with a Chinese request to block access to more than 300 articles from the China Quarterly, a leading China studies journal, so as to avoid having other publications targeted by Beijing’s censors.
Some vowed to boycott publications produced by CUP — which printed its first book in 1584 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I — until the step was reversed.
Speaking to the Guardian, Tim Pringle, China Quarterly’s editor, said he hoped Chinese authorities would scrap their instruction to block more than 300 articles they deemed objectionable. He also hoped CUP chiefs would use meetings at a Beijing book fair this week to tell the Chinese government that the move represented “a significant step backwards in terms of academic freedom”.
However, Pringle, who is a senior lecturer at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, admitted he was pessimistic about the chances of a Chinese change of heart. “I can’ t see this being rolled back anytime soon, although we will lobby for that to happen. I think this is more about the configuration of the current leadership. It is a reflection of the Xi Jinping era. It’s a stronger shade of authoritarian government that is less pragmatic, or certainly appears to be less pragmatic [that the previous administration] .”
Pringle described China’s previous leaders, president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao, as authoritarians who had nevertheless been “willing to take on views from an emerging and at time buoyant civil society and to respond pragmatically to some of those views”.
That changed dramatically after Xi became the Communist party’s general secretary, almost five years ago, in November 2012, and instigated a dramatic clampdown on opposition voices. Targets have included academics and journalists who have been ordered to toe the party line; human rights lawyers and their supporters who have been disappeared or jailed; and, now, the world’s oldest publishing house.
