4 ms·

I work in Chinese publishing, and the same thing is absolutely happening there. Books are being pulled off the shelves, publishers are being warned away from an

by girzel 9y ago

I work in Chinese publishing, and the same thing is absolutely happening there. Books are being pulled off the shelves, publishers are being warned away from anything potentially controversial. The basic attitude is, "Don't risk it", and it's absolutely deadly to creativity and culture. On the one hand, the central government is trying to encourage Chinese culture to "Go Out" and wow the world. On the other, it is absolutely strangling the country's cultural creators.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
enoemos 9y ago
There're two/three forces in PRC ideological and cultural ministries repsenting the worldviews of Han, Manchu and Hui respectively. In Mao era, the three had been forged into one piece by iron fist of the communist ideology. After Mao era, the three founding groups of the CCP separated as the minorities' ethnicity awareness grows. Manchu and Hui elites have concentrated in arts, culture and media related 'soft power' agencies. Therefore, it's not hard to see the conflicts in these domains. In fact , the ethnic Hui controlled CCTV removed all words, images and performances about pigs in the 2007 Spring Festival Gala Show for the Year of Boar. There've been severe cultural conflicts under the hood of harmonic society and the Han majority are losing control of many domains in recent years, including the law enforcement ministry. Don't be shocked if the PRC becomes a Islamic state with Chinese characteristics in the next 60 years if the Han majority still can't find something unique to believe in (no,the western ideology failed in 1989 already, though Christian Han are growing rapidly). Forget the Uyghur, focus on Hui, one of the three founding ethnic groups of the CCP. President Xi resorts to Neo Conficius Ideology to spirit up the money-addictive Han majority.But Hui has Allah and 陈克礼. Let's see if there will be any pig related shows in the next CCTV Gala for the year of Boar 2019.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jxramos 9y ago
This is very concerning. I'm curious how all this is delivered as far as the actions of officials to enact this behavior in general populace. How exactly do they pull it off? Are there new strategies employed or do they leverage years of chilling requests and punishments for people to generally know better not to cross the government? Do people personally know political prisoners and what not or see punished individuals paraded on TV and what not? Thanks for sharing.
- girzel 9y ago
  The framework of control has been in place for a long time, it's just that they've been tightening down the (already-in-place) screws over the past couple of years. The basic mechanism is control of ISBNs: the supply of these numbers is tightly restricted, and a book cannot be published without them. A fixed number of state-owned publishers is able to issue ISBNs, though privately-owned publishing companies can buy the numbers or work with a state-owned house to publish their books. An ISBN acts as a chain-of-custody token for the publication of books. While some books are subject to approval before publication, the vast majority are not, and publication is done at the publisher's discretion. Should a book cause problems after publication, however, the consequences are catastrophic. The ISBN (and a "responsible editor" whose name appears on the copyright page of the book) allows the government to track down everyone who was involved in the production of the book, and squash them. People lose their jobs, in some cases publishing companies are suspended or dissolved outright. It's a system carefully designed to make writers and publishers more cautious than they would actually need to be. Publishing, while highly controlled by the government, isn't really an area where people end up in prison, or you see televised trials. The worst that usually happens is the ruining of a career, or in extreme cases the dissolution of a company (in journalism, by contrast, people get put in jail, or disappear). I've written about this distinction before[1], which I think is lost on most international observers. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-censors-of-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-censors-...
  - 68c12c16 9y ago
    Well, I feel for any form of censorship, the essence is to disrupt the communication among the people in the society. The goal of this disruption is to prevent a formation of synchronization in the population. It could be carried out on all kinds of communication media and for all their different stages. A system of censorship could be much easily implemented when one has the visibility over the entire society and the access to all its social resources. Before the age of internet, their focus was on book/newspaper publishing; and in our current age of internet, the focus was on internet as well as book/newspaper publishing. And in terms of their practical methods, you can just imagine what you would do when you want to disrupt the information flow and when you have the absolute control of every sub-system in a society (i.e. the courts, the police, all the newspapers/websites/tv channels/radio stations, as well as the ability of not needing to worry about your livelihood when you do not work on anything else...) It's almost an impregnable castle, as long as it does not crumble from inside the ruling system itself...

by girzel 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

enoemos 9y ago

There're two/three forces in PRC ideological and cultural ministries repsenting the worldviews of Han, Manchu and Hui respectively. In Mao era, the three had been forged into one piece by iron fist of the communist ideology. After Mao era, the three founding groups of the CCP separated as the minorities' ethnicity awareness grows. Manchu and Hui elites have concentrated in arts, culture and media related 'soft power' agencies. Therefore, it's not hard to see the conflicts in these domains. In fact , the ethnic Hui controlled CCTV removed all words, images and performances about pigs in the 2007 Spring Festival Gala Show for the Year of Boar. There've been severe cultural conflicts under the hood of harmonic society and the Han majority are losing control of many domains in recent years, including the law enforcement ministry. Don't be shocked if the PRC becomes a Islamic state with Chinese characteristics in the next 60 years if the Han majority still can't find something unique to believe in (no,the western ideology failed in 1989 already, though Christian Han are growing rapidly). Forget the Uyghur, focus on Hui, one of the three founding ethnic groups of the CCP. President Xi resorts to Neo Conficius Ideology to spirit up the money-addictive Han majority.But Hui has Allah and 陈克礼. Let's see if there will be any pig related shows in the next CCTV Gala for the year of Boar 2019.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jxramos 9y ago

This is very concerning. I'm curious how all this is delivered as far as the actions of officials to enact this behavior in general populace. How exactly do they pull it off? Are there new strategies employed or do they leverage years of chilling requests and punishments for people to generally know better not to cross the government? Do people personally know political prisoners and what not or see punished individuals paraded on TV and what not? Thanks for sharing.

girzel 9y ago
The framework of control has been in place for a long time, it's just that they've been tightening down the (already-in-place) screws over the past couple of years. The basic mechanism is control of ISBNs: the supply of these numbers is tightly restricted, and a book cannot be published without them. A fixed number of state-owned publishers is able to issue ISBNs, though privately-owned publishing companies can buy the numbers or work with a state-owned house to publish their books. An ISBN acts as a chain-of-custody token for the publication of books. While some books are subject to approval before publication, the vast majority are not, and publication is done at the publisher's discretion. Should a book cause problems after publication, however, the consequences are catastrophic. The ISBN (and a "responsible editor" whose name appears on the copyright page of the book) allows the government to track down everyone who was involved in the production of the book, and squash them. People lose their jobs, in some cases publishing companies are suspended or dissolved outright. It's a system carefully designed to make writers and publishers more cautious than they would actually need to be. Publishing, while highly controlled by the government, isn't really an area where people end up in prison, or you see televised trials. The worst that usually happens is the ruining of a career, or in extreme cases the dissolution of a company (in journalism, by contrast, people get put in jail, or disappear). I've written about this distinction before[1], which I think is lost on most international observers. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-censors-of-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-censors-...
- 68c12c16 9y ago
  Well, I feel for any form of censorship, the essence is to disrupt the communication among the people in the society. The goal of this disruption is to prevent a formation of synchronization in the population. It could be carried out on all kinds of communication media and for all their different stages. A system of censorship could be much easily implemented when one has the visibility over the entire society and the access to all its social resources. Before the age of internet, their focus was on book/newspaper publishing; and in our current age of internet, the focus was on internet as well as book/newspaper publishing. And in terms of their practical methods, you can just imagine what you would do when you want to disrupt the information flow and when you have the absolute control of every sub-system in a society (i.e. the courts, the police, all the newspapers/websites/tv channels/radio stations, as well as the ability of not needing to worry about your livelihood when you do not work on anything else...) It's almost an impregnable castle, as long as it does not crumble from inside the ruling system itself...