Book censorship in the People's Republic of China

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The book censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the ruling party of the People's Republic, the Chinese Communist Party , implemented or arranged.

From the beginning of the 1980s to 2013, the Central State Office for Press and Publishing (GAPP) in China was responsible for the ongoing monitoring of the press. In March 2013, GAPP and the State Office for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) merged to form the State Main Office for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT). The SAPPRFT is directly subordinate to the State Council and is subordinate to the ideological direction of the Central Propaganda Department (ZPA). The review of all Chinese literature that is to be sold on the open market is subject to this administration. The SAPPRFT has the legal authority to screen, censor and prohibit every print and every electronic or Internet publication. Since all publishers in the PRC must be licensed through the SAPPRFT, this office also has the power to deny a person the right to publication and can completely shut down any publisher that does not obey its orders.

The publishing industry is one of the most heavily controlled industries by the state. According to the Beijing BIS, there are 580 official book publishers in China (2014), all of which are state-owned, and a large, continuously growing number of private publishers, which are officially not allowed to this day. There are more than 4,000 underground factories publishing books across China, according to a report in ZonaEurope. The ratio of official to unlicensed books is believed to be 40% to 60%. The Chinese government continues to hold public book burns for unapproved but popular intellectual pollution literature , although critics claim that the resulting attention to individual titles only helps sell those books. According to the applicable customs regulations, the import of printed matter that is harmful to China's politics, economy, culture and morals is prohibited.

Hong Kong

According to the Basic Law, Article 27 of the Special Administrative Region, there is freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of publication in Hong Kong . Publishers like New Century Press freely publish their books, including lurid fictional accounts of Chinese officials and banned episodes of Chinese history. Books that are banned in mainland China are sold in bookstores such as Causeway Bay Books or the People's Commune bookstore. The latter also imports books published by Mirror Books in New York City. Often times the customers are party cadres who buy what they have banned in mainland China.

In the autumn of 2015, the Special Administrative Region was shaken by the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers. All of them worked for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) critical publisher Mighty Current Publishing and its bookstore Causeway Bay Books. After his return in June 2016, Lam Wing-kee, one of the abductees, went public. At a press conference he reported about his abduction and that his confession, which was broadcast on Phoenix TV in February, had been staged; a text was presented to him that he had to read.

List of banned books

This is a tiny fraction of the thousands of books that were or are still banned in China.

Family history over three generations from the imperial era to the reign of Mao Zedong from 1909 to 1978. Describes the great suffering of that time during the ruthless implementation of political ideas. The book gave many Western readers a first glimpse into life in China under the tyranny of the Communist Party with Chairman Mao Zedong. Wild Swans is among the top 20 banned books.
Anti-war book by Taiwanese bestselling author Lung Ying-tai. Most important Chinese-language new release of 2009 and the years before; may not be mentioned or discussed in China.
Over 100,000 copies were sold in Taiwan in the first month of its publication and 10,000 in Hong Kong, but discussions of their work were banned in mainland China following the book launch.
“Denounced by communists and nationalists alike, Mr. Shen saw his writings banned in Taiwan while publishers in mainland China burned his books and destroyed the printing plates for his novels. ... So successful was the effort to erase Mr. Shen's name from modern literature that only a few younger Chinese today know his name, let alone the scope of his work. The Chinese government has only reissued a selection of his writings since 1978, but only in an edition of a few thousand copies. ... His death was not reported in China. "
In 1965, the children's novel was temporarily banned in the People's Republic of China because of its portrayal of early Marxism. The ban was lifted in 1991 after Seuss died.
The founder of Falun Gong received various awards in the early years after publication. “Many Chinese government officials initially praised the virtues of Falun Gong and praised its positive impact on individuals and society as a whole. These officials helped spread Falun Gong in the early 1990s. A third of the party’s 60 million members, including senior government officials, practiced Falun Gong. However, a handful of party members felt threatened by Falun Gong's increasing popularity. Those atheist party comrades could not accept the fact that many people, including members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after 40 years of Marxist upbringing, looked elsewhere for spiritual and moral values. They tried to find flaws in Falun Gong in order to stir up ideological defenses against the more open-minded officials, in order to fire them and thus "purify" the party for their political advantage. [...] An article on June 17, 1996 in the Guanming Daily, the mouthpiece of the CCP, opened a media campaign against Falun Gong. The government urged many newspapers to follow suit with their own defamatory reports. On July 24, 1996, the Communist Party Ministry of Propaganda ordered that all of Li Hongzhi's books be banned. "
The "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" was published as an editorial series in the Chinese-language newspaper Epoch Times (Dajiyuan), based in New York, in late 2004 and later published as a book. The series of articles criticizes the party's rule in China and describes the political repression by the party and its propaganda apparatus, as well as its attacks on traditional Chinese culture and its value systems. Shortly after the series of articles was published, the Tuidang movement began , a Chinese dissident phenomenon that led to the withdrawal from the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated youth organizations. According to the Epoch Times, 237 million Chinese have resigned by May 2016 . The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic ( BStU ) has included this book in the specialist library.
In 2006 allegations of organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners surfaced in the People's Republic of China. This led to an investigation by former Canadian Secretary of State and Attorney General David Kilgour PC and Canadian human rights attorney David Matas . Kilgour and Matas compiled 52 key pieces of evidence, including government documents from China; publicly available live organ services offered on Chinese hospital websites; and telephone interviews with surgeons in transplant hospitals. In July, the investigators released their first investigation report, in which they concluded that "the Chinese government and its authorities in many parts of the country, particularly in hospitals, but also in detention centers and" people's courts ", had been conducting one since 1999 killed large but unknown numbers of Falun Gong prisoners of faith ”. In January 2007, Kilgour and Matas published an expanded version of their investigation report and in 2009 published all the facts gathered up to that point in the book Bloody Harvest: Killing Falun Gong for Their Organs . The investigation report was banned in China from the start. Russia follows the 2008 ban.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Agencies Responsible for Censorship in China , Congressional Executive Commission on China, accessed August 26, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b Information on the book market in China , BIZ Beijing - Book Market China 2014, April 2014, accessed August 26, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b Lea Shih: Media and State in the PR China: The Institutional Renewal of State Media Regulation, chinappolitik.de, June 2008, accessed August 26, 2017.
  4. ^ The Underground Publishing Industry in China , ZonaEuropa.com, accessed August 26, 2017.
  5. ↑ Tom Carter: Naughty CHINA | "Spiritual Pollution" Essential Reading List , Amazon.com, accessed August 26, 2017.
  6. ↑ China Customs Regulations , accessed August 26, 2017 at chinarundreisen.com.
  7. ↑ GTAI GERMANY TRADE & INVEST: Basic knowledge import in China, PR , gtai.de, accessed August 26, 2017.
  8. ↑ Chris Buckley: On Hong Kong Shelves, Illicit Dirt on China's Elite , The New York Times, May 18, 2013, accessed July 30, 2016.
  9. ↑ Kai Strittmatter: Books about sex, about Mao's crimes, about 1989 , Tagesanzeiger, December 2, 2014, accessed July 27, 2016.
  10. ↑ China: Prohibited Books Are Popular Gifts for Officials EPOCH TIMES, May 25, 2013, accessed July 27, 2016.
  11. ↑ Katharin Tai: You said I had committed a crime , ZEIT ONLINE, July 12, 2016, accessed July 28, 2016.
  12. ^ Matthias Müller, Beijing: In Beijing's Stranglehold , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 17, 2016, accessed July 29, 2016.
  13. ↑ Felicity Capon and Catherine Scott: Top 20 books they tried to ban , The Telegraph, October 20, 2014, accessed July 28, 2016.
  14. ↑ EDWARD A. GARGAN: Shen Congwen, 85, a Champion Of Freedom for Writers in China , The New York Times, May 13, 1988, accessed July 29, 2016.
  15. ↑ Sherri Machlin, Mulberry Street Library: Banned Books Week: Green Eggs and Ham , New York Public Library, September 24, 2013, accessed July 29, 2016.
  16. ↑ The Growth of Falun Gong in China , Falun Dafa Information Center, accessed Aug. 3, 2016.
  17. ↑ The Initial Persecution of Falun Gong , Falun Dafa Information Center, accessed August 3, 2016.
  18. ↑ Klemens Ludwig: Multi-ethnic China: the national minorities in the Middle Kingdom , page 161, 2009, accessed July 30, 2016.
  19. ↑ Nearly 10,000 in New York Support 237 Million Chinese Who Have Quit the Chinese Communist Party , Epoch Times, May 26, 2016, accessed June 28, 2017.
  20. ↑ BStU Library, 10/0926 Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party , the Stasi, November / December 2010, Page 12, PDF, accessed on June 28, 2017
  21. ↑ David Kilgour and David Matas, BLOODY HARVEST: Investigation Report on Allegations of Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Practitioners in China - January 31, 2007 , November 2007, organharvestinvestigation.net, January 31, 2007, accessed June 10, 2017
  22. ↑ David Kilgour, David Matas: Bloody Harvest - The killing of Falun Gong for their organs. Seraphim Editions, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9808879-7-6