Book Censorship in China

A best selling economics book by the French economist Thomas Piketty appears unlikely to be sold in mainland China after he refused requests to censor it.

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has expressed admiration for Piketty's work, but Capital and Ideology , which was published last year, has not made it to the mainland China market due to sections on inequality in the country.

Piketty told the Guardian the Chinese publisher Citic Press had sent his French publisher a list of 10 pages of requested cuts in June from the French edition of the book, and a further list in August related to the English edition. He said:

I refused these conditions and told them that I would only accept a translation with no cut of any sort. They basically wanted to cut almost all parts referring to contemporary China, and in particular to inequality and opacity in China.

The passages highlighted by the Chinese publishers as requiring censorship include one referring to the post-communism societies of regions including China becoming hypercapitalism's staunchest allies, as a direct consequence of the disasters of Stalinism and Maoism. Other sections reference the opacity of Chinese income and wealth data, capital flight and corruption.

Academic publisher Taylor & Francis , whose publications include the Asian Studies Review, has confirmed that its Chinese importer, a government offshoot, decided in September to block 83 of the 1,466 academic journals to which Taylor & Francis provides access in China.

The British publishing house did not name the censored journals, but they probably address subjects that are routine censored by the Chinese authorities, such as the contemporary history of China, Taiwan and Tibet, human rights and civil rights.

Cedric Alviani, the head of RSF's East Asia bureau said:

This latest act of censorship shows how President Xi Jinping is implementing a policy of total information control to secure his hold on power. After gagging journalists, bloggers and Internet uses, the regime is now targeting academic journals whose findings contradict its simplistic rhetoric.

In an assault on freedom of expression, a court in China sentenced a successful novelist, Ms. Liu, to 10 years in prison on October 31 for including explicit homoerotic content in her work. The charge against her was making and selling obscene material for profit. Information about the case has just recently been circulated online, generating a widespread outcry on social media against censorship as well as the disproportionate and excessive severity of her sentence.

The writer, who uses the pen name Tianyi, was arrested in 2017, after the publication of her novel Occupy . Pornography is illegal in China . The 1997 penal code forbids depicting sexual acts except for medical or artistic purposes. According to police in Anhui Province, in eastern China, the book described obscene behavior between males, including violence, abuse, and humiliation.

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Laos authorities are preparing to introduce unprecedented social media censorship possibly modeled on Chinese and Vietnamese censorship laws, officials announced this week.

The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications is currently drawing up the censorship laws which are expected to take effect by the end of the year, the ministry's E-Government Centre Director General Phonpasit Phissamay said.

The rules are aimed at ensuring social networking sites are used in a manner supportive of the government Users may be prosecuted for posting information the authorities don't like.

Amid the rapidly growing social media, Facebook users have been anticipating an online clampdown by the Lao Communist Party leadership, which has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1975.

I expected this would happen someday, even though government says we have a democracy, one Facebook user posted on the Laos News Update Facebook page. We won't be able to say anything [online] now. It's because the government can't stand criticism from people, another user said.