Publisher cuts site content in China

Cambridge Press yields to censors

BEIJING -- One of the world's oldest publishing houses, Cambridge University Press, has bowed to pressure from Beijing and removed some content on its site in China.

The content is published in China Quarterly, an academic journal run by the press. In a letter made public on social media Friday, the editor of the journal, Tim Pringle, said Cambridge University Press had informed him that authorities had ordered it to censor more than 300 articles related to matters such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the Cultural Revolution.

The publishing house's site risked being shut down if it did not comply with the request, the letter said.

In response to the government's actions, the journal issued a statement expressing its "deep concern and disappointment."

"We note, too, that this restriction of academic freedom is not an isolated move but a further reflection of policies that have narrowed the space for public engagement and discussion across Chinese society," the statement said.

Pringle said in a telephone interview that Chinese academics, who have been publishing in the journal in increasing numbers, would suffer the most.

"It's not only a retrograde step in principle, but it affects Chinese scholars in particular," he said, because they will not have access to global scholarship on the country.

"It's a real pity that as China goes out to the world, it is accompanied by restrictions on academic freedom," he added.

Cambridge University Press confirmed the deletions in a statement, saying it had done so to safeguard its other publications. It also pledged to raise censorship with authorities at meetings next week.

"We will not change the nature of our publishing to make content acceptable in China, and we remain committed to ensuring that access to a wide variety of publishing is possible for academics, researchers, students and teachers in this market," the publishing house said.

Some of the censored articles date from the journal's founding in the 1960s. They are available to subscribers outside China, but searches inside China omit the articles.

In addition, the press voluntarily removed more than 1,000 e-books from its site, according to Pringle's letter.

Until now, foreign academic presses were largely immune to this sort of censorship. In recent years, the websites of most foreign news organizations have been blocked in China, as have social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the search engine Google.

But because of their small readership and high subscription costs -- one China Quarterly article costs more than $20 -- academic journals were not targeted.

The new measures seem in line with announcements made by President Xi Jinping in February 2016 that all media content on any platform must come under the Communist Party's "guidance."

"The same rules apply to any foreign content, academic or otherwise, that is accessible within China," said David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin.

After news of the censorship spread, academics inside and outside China expressed alarm.

"This is unprecedented that the censorship has reached out to the academic sphere," said Zhan Jiang, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. "There are many Chinese scholars who return to China after studying overseas and they need to do research based on material in English. This means that there will be limits and more hardships on their research."

A Section on 08/19/2017

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