On January 1, 2007, the Chinese government loosened restrictions on the media, including those that limited the freedom of foreign journalists to travel and conduct interviews in the country. Shortly after, the Paris-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders announced an end to its boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Foreign media began speculating whether the easing of control might even go beyond next year’s Summer Games and, more generally, whether it signaled a new willingness on the part of China’s censors to permit greater freedom of speech.
They did not have to speculate for long. At a January 11th meeting of the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), GAPP’s deputy director Wu Shulin produced a list of banned books from 2006 and threatened to slap publishers who defy the ban with stiff financial penalties. Of the eight books on the list, seven were blackballed because their contents “stepped over the line.” Wu did not specify where the that line was, but the message to writers could not have been more clear.
The list of banned books includes both fiction and non-fiction. Trials and Tribulations, by Xiao Jian, depicts a man’s tortured life between the 1911 Republican Revolution and the 1958 Great Leap Forward. The Press, by Zhu Huaxiang, is a fictional narrative of the inner workings of China’s media industry. And The Other Stories of History: My Days at the Supplement Division of the People’s Daily, written by veteran journalist Yuan Ying, is an insider’s account of work at the Communist party’s organ paper. Although Yuan Ying’s book deals with events that occurred at the paper during the 1980s, GAPP’s deputy director claimed that it had “divulged state secrets.”
Also on the list is I Object: the Road to Politics by a People’s Congress Deputy by Zhu Ling. Based on three years of research, the book chronicles peasant-turned-teacher-turned-activist Yao Lifa’s 12-year struggle to run for a seat on a county legislature in Hubei province. In an interview with Radio Free Asia, the author, a former China Central Television (CCTV) legal affairs correspondent, expressed her surprise over the ban. She had written the book, she said, “with the mindset of a CCTV reporter who consciously complied with the official line.” Yao Lifa, the subject of the biography, confirmed to Radio Free Asia that, before the manuscript went to press, author Zhu Ling had expunged details and language that she thought might be deemed politically incorrect.
Yao Lifa attributed the ban to the fact that his dogged persistence in promoting open and fair elections had incurred the wrath of the Central Propaganda Department. He believes that, as a result, any book by him, or about him, will be banned.
While Yao Lifa’s view of why his biography was banned may be little more than speculation, there is no doubt as to why the censors targeted Zhang Yihe’s Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars. Of the eight books on the list, it was the only one whose banning was explicitly attributed to the identity of the author, rather than the content of the book. This can only be interpreted in one way; Zhang Yihe, as a writer, has officially been blacklisted. At the January 11th GAPP meeting, deputy director Wu Shulin admonished the Hunan Publishing House for publishing a book “by this writer” despite repeated prior warnings “about this person.” Wu threatened to exact financial penalties and impose tougher restrictions on the publisher’s future operations. Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars, which portrays the suffering endured by seven Peking opera actors during the Cultural Revolution, is Zhang Yihe’s third book. It is also the 65-year-old’s third book to be banned.
In 2002, to help mark her 60th birthday, Zhang Yihe “picked up the pen and began to tell stories.” She is the daughter of Zhang Bojun, Mao Zedong’s transportation minister, who pushed for a more democratic socialist system and was, as a result, branded the “No. 1 rightist” in 1957 during the anti-rightist campaign. Zhang Yihe’s maiden work, Days of Old Do Not Disappear Like Smoke, is a poignant eye-witness account of the purge of her father and other intellectuals. It was banned shortly after its publication in January 2004. The Independent Chinese PEN Center subsequently awarded Zhang Yihe the Freedom to Write Award in October of that year for her efforts to “restore the integrity of the Chinese language with this candid account of that dark chapter in history.”
A drama and literature major in college, Zhang Yihe completed her second book in 2005. A Gust of Wind Carries away the Verses of the Ages takes place during the Cultural Revolution and details the persecution and tragic death of celebrated Peking opera actor Ma Lianliang. This work, too, was banned, on grounds that its content “stepped over the line.” Zhang Yihe, who in 1970 was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “counter-revolutionary crimes,” though she was released in 1979, remained silent over the two earlier bans.
Upon learning that GAPP deputy director Wu Shulin had pointed an accusing finger at her during the January 11th meeting announcing the banning of her latest book, Zhang Yihe decided to break her silence. The author issued a 1,000-word statement declaring her defiance and vowing to defend her writing with her life. In a January 22nd interview with Radio Free Asia, Zhang Yihe expressed bewilderment as to why the Central Propaganda Department had targeted her repeatedly. The self-proclaimed “story-teller” reiterated her disinterest in politics, and called on China’s overly nervous censors not to politicize her works, which she characterized as “literary attempts with the sole purpose of moving people.”
Beijing’s ongoing suppression of freedom of expression goes beyond the print medium. Merely one week after the GAPP meeting, the “21st Century Xingyun Forum,” in the city of Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan, was ordered shut down by the Central Propaganda Department. Co-sponsored by the Xingyun tobacco company and the 21st Century Economic Journal, the monthly forum’s express goal was to “airlift the smartest brains to Kunming” in order to “bring the most forward ideas to those most in need of them.” Among those reported to have been on the roster of future speakers were Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, and Mohammad Yunus, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Forum began on January 12th and featured as its inaugural speaker pro-reform pundit and policy wonk Zhou Ruijin. Zhou, the former deputy editor-in-chief of People’s Daily, first came to prominence when China’s economy was stagnating in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Zhou proposed accelerating economic reforms in 1991 under the nom de plume Huang Fuping. In February of last year, in a controversial opinion piece entitled “Reforms Should Not Waver,” Zhou argued in favor of deeper economic reforms in the country’s preeminent business journal, Caijing.
As the opening speaker of the soon-to-be-banned Forum, Zhou Ruijin examined the tug between ideological and market-oriented solutions to China’s economic challenges, and cautioned against the resurfacing of “leftist” elements.
A staffer of the 21st Century Economic Journal, a co-sponsor of the Forum, confirmed to Radio Free Asia that approximately one week after Zhou Ruijin’s appearance, the Forum was ordered shut down by “higher-ups” with no reason given. In the meantime, Beijing University law professor He Weifang, scheduled to speak at the Forum in February, was notified of the cancellation of his speaking engagement. When asked by Radio Free Asia to comment on this turn of events, the professor indicated that he was too “numbed” by recent occurrences to comment. In apparent despair, he added: “Anything could happen for no good reason.”
While China grants foreign journalists greater freedoms during the months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it is at the same time unleashing its censorship hounds on its own citizens. Chinese writers have long been subjected to government censorship–and worse. The current escalation in censorship activity aimed at books on history and the media is an attempt to keep citizens from being reminded and affected by artistic and journalistic discussion of the Communist party’s ignominious past, during which official policies and political campaigns resulted in the suffering and death of tens of millions.
Censorship makes a society’s citizens walk on eggshells and live in fear of their government. It harms not only those being censored, but more importantly those who are prohibited from hearing what others have to say. And the atmosphere it produces is hardly consistent with the goals of a “harmonious society,” a concept being touted and promoted actively by China’s President Hu Jintao.
Foreign journalists who are now granted greater freedom to report in China may wish to use that freedom to chide the leadership for refusing to give indigenous writers the freedom of expression that writers in the West take for granted. That would be a most fitting way to help the Olympic Games celebrate the human spirit.
Jennifer Chou is the director of Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin Service.
