![\"04osnos-master675\"](\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2014\/05\/04osnos-master675.jpg\")
<\/a>\n<\/a>Credit Eric Hu<\/p>\n
In February, while I finished work on a book about China, a publishing company in Shanghai asked for an early copy, in order to begin a translation. The book follows people I\u2019ve come to know, some prominent, others not, as they try to change their lives in a country throbbing with possibility \u2014 individuals like Gong Haiyan, a farmer\u2019s daughter and businesswoman who envisions herself in a \u201crace against the clock, to seize the initiative before it\u2019s lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
After reading the manuscript, an editor in Shanghai replied with enthusiasm, but also sent me a list of politically active people in the narrative who, he wrote, \u201cwould be difficult\u201d to include in the Chinese edition: a lawyer (Chen Guangcheng), an artist (Ai Weiwei), three writers (Liu Xiaobo, Murong Xuecun, Han Han) and \u201ca few others.\u201d He made a proposal: \u201cPlease kindly let me know if it is possible for us to cooperate on a special version of your book for its Chinese publication.\u201d I had a choice to make.<\/p>\n
The defining fact of China in our time is its contradictions: The world\u2019s largest buyer of BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles is ruled by a Communist Party that has tried to banish the word \u201cluxury\u201d from advertisements. It is home to two of the world\u2019s most highly valued Internet companies (Tencent and Baidu), as well as history\u2019s most sophisticated effort to censor human expression. China is both the world\u2019s newest superpower and its largest authoritarian state.<\/p>\n
For most of Chinese history, readers had limited access to books from abroad. In the 1960s and \u201970s, when foreign literature was officially restricted to party elites, students circulated handwritten, string-bound copies of J.D. Salinger, Arthur Conan Doyle and many others. But in the past three decades, rules have relaxed somewhat and sales of foreign writers have ballooned, thanks to Chinese consumers who are ravenous for new information about themselves and the world. In 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available, China\u2019s 580 state-owned publishers acquired the rights to more than 16,000 foreign titles, up nearly tenfold since 1995; current hot sellers range from Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez\u2019s \u201cOne Hundred Years of Solitude\u201d to Henry A. Kissinger\u2019s \u201cOn China.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ever since the reign of the first emperor, who oversaw the burning of Confucian texts in 213 B.C., Chinese leaders have valued the science of censorship. To release a book in China today, foreign authors must accept the judgment of a publisher\u2019s in-house censors, who identify names, terms and historical events that the party considers unflattering or a threat to political stability.<\/p>\n
When the Chinese edition of Khaled Hosseini\u2019s novel \u201cThe Kite Runner\u201d was published in 2006, critical references to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan were removed. (For Chinese authors, the stakes are incomparably larger; they either heed restrictions or lose the ability to publish in their home country. Prosecutors can cite published writing as evidence of \u201cincitement to subvert state power.\u201d) If publishers overlook a taboo, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television can pull books from the shelves and punish those responsible. Similar scrutiny applies to television shows, films and radio programs, and the government keeps an especially close eye on broadcasting, because it reaches the most people. When President Obama, in his first inaugural address, mentioned earlier generations who \u201cfaced down fascism and Communism,\u201d China\u2019s state broadcaster cut away. The word \u201cCommunism\u201d did not appear on transcripts published in the Chinese press.<\/p>\n
Living and writing in Beijing from 2005 to 2013, I found that the precise boundaries of the censored world were difficult to map. Though some rules leak to the public \u2014 last month, the State Council Information Office advised all websites to \u201cfind and remove the video titled \u2018Actual Footage of Chengdu Police Surrounding and Beating Homeowners Who Were Defending Their Rights\u201d\u2019 \u2014 most of the censored world is populated by unmentionable names and untellable stories, defined by rules that are themselves secret. The Central Propaganda Department, the highest-ranking agency responsible for \u201cthought work,\u201d does not report on its activities; it is so averse to attention that its headquarters, on the Avenue of Eternal Peace, have no address or sign. To quantify one realm of Chinese censorship, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in 2012, studied messages on Sina Weibo, the social media site. They found that more than 16 percent of all posts were deleted because of the content.<\/p>\n
One known fact about China\u2019s censored world is that it is growing. Movie theaters are proliferating by the day, and Hollywood makes the cuts required to reach them. The makers of \u201cSkyfall,\u201d the latest James Bond film, removed a scene involving the killing of a Chinese security guard, and a plot line in which Javier Bardem says he became a villain during his time in Chinese custody. The New York Times has been unable to receive new residency visas for journalists for more than a year, because it reported on the family wealth of Chinese leaders. Bloomberg News is facing similar retaliation for its investigations of party officials. In March, the Bloomberg L.P. chairman, Peter T. Grauer, said the company \u201cshould have rethought\u201d the decision to range beyond business news, because it jeopardized the company\u2019s potential market in China.<\/p>\n
But as I considered publishing a book in China, local publishers gradually filled in a road map of the censored world. On behalf of a company in Beijing, an agent wrote, \u201cTo allow the publication in China, the author will agree to revise nearly 1\/4 of the contents.\u201d The publisher had itemized trouble spots chapter by chapter, beginning with a line in the prologue: \u201cChina has never been more pluralistic, urban, and prosperous, yet it is the only country in the world with a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in prison.\u201d (The first half of the sentence could stay.)<\/p>\n
Some taboos were foreseeable; the publisher worried about a mention of Mao\u2019s Great Leap Forward, because that project resulted in a famine that killed between 30 and 45 million people. Other problems were subtler; since the party credits its economic success to Deng Xiaoping, I was advised not to lavish too much praise on the contributions of his peers. Judging by the notes, the censor seemed to grow exasperated: \u201cChapter 14: The whole chapter is about Chen Guangcheng.\u201d (I write about Mr. Chen, a blind lawyer now in exile in the United States, as an example of Chinese determination to defy the circumstances of birth.)<\/p>\n
In some cases, the censors\u2019 requirements startled me: The former politician Bo Xilai, a one-time rising star now serving a life sentence for corruption, was convicted in a trial covered by state television, so why is discussion of him sensitive? The problem, it seemed, is how it can be mentioned, and how much. When an official version of history has been written, an unofficial version becomes unwelcome.<\/p>\n
A foreign author who wants to publish in China can find many reasons to tolerate the demands for censorship. A book, even compromised, might inspire a new generation of readers to demand information from beyond their borders; it might help pay for the writing of the next book (or, let\u2019s face it, a new roof). As a writer, it is tempting to rationalize the discomfort by emphasizing the percentage of the book that survives the cuts, rather than the percentage that is censored.<\/p>\n
But those explanations fail to surmount an inexorable problem. The most difficult part of writing about contemporary China is capturing its proportions: How much of the story is truly inspiring, and how much of it is truly grim? How much of its values are reflected in technology start-ups and stories of self-creation, and how much of its values are reflected in the Great Firewall and abuses of power? It is tempting to accept censorship as a matter of the margins \u2014 a pruning that leaves the core of the story intact \u2014 but altering the proportions of a portrait of China gives a false reflection of how China appears to the world at a moment when it is making fundamental choices about what kind of country it will become.<\/p>\n
In the end, I decided not to publish my book in mainland China. (It will be available to Chinese readers from a publisher in Taiwan.) To produce a \u201cspecial version\u201d that plays down dissent, trims the Great Leap Forward, and recites the official history of Bo Xilai\u2019s corruption would not help Chinese readers. On the contrary, it would endorse a false image of the past and present. As a writer, my side of the bargain is to give the truest story I can.<\/p>\n
Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author of \u201cAge of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.\u201d<\/p>\n
A version of this op-ed appears in print on May 4, 2014, on page SR3 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Censored World. Order Reprints|Today’s Paper|Subscribe<\/p>\n
From The New York Times<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/03\/opinion\/sunday\/chinas-censored-world.html?_r=1<\/p>\n
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