[Reader-list] The Censor in the Mirror by Ha Jin

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

This list has often discussed censorship in the past. Here is a  
recent essay by a well known exiled Chinese poet and writer, Ha JIn  
that I enjoyed reading, about censorship in contemporary China. Note  
how 'piracy' comes to the rescue of the censored writer. I hope you  
all find this of interest. Incidentally, Ha Jin did not return to  
China after the Tienanmen Square Massacre in 1989.

regards

Shuddha
-------------------------

The Censor in the Mirror
By Ha Jin

Censorship in China is a powerful field of force; it affects anyone  
who gets close to it. Four years ago, I signed five book contracts  
with a Shanghai publisher who planned to bring out four volumes of my  
fiction and a collection of my poems. The editor in charge of the  
project told me that he couldn’t possibly consider publishing two of  
my novels, The Crazed and War Trash, owing to the sensitive subject  
matter. The former touches on the Tiananmen tragedy, and the latter  
deals with the Korean War. I was supposed to select the poems and  
translate them into Chinese for the volume of poetry. As I began  
thinking about what poems to include, I couldn’t help but censor  
myself, knowing intuitively which ones might not get through the  
censorship. It was disheartening to realize I would have to exclude  
the stronger poems if the volume could ever see print in China. As a  
result, I couldn’t embark on the translation wholeheartedly. To date,  
I haven’t translated a single poem, though the deadline was May 2005.

The publisher publicly announced time and again that these five books  
would come out soon, sometime in late 2005, according to the  
contracts. But that spring, the first in the series, my collection of  
short stories, Under the Red Flag, was sent to the Shanghai  
censorship office—the Bureau of Press and Publications—and the book  
was shot down. So the whole project was stonewalled. A year later, I  
heard that the publisher had decided to abandon the project. In the  
meantime, numerous official newspapers spread the word that my books  
had no market value in China.

The office that Chinese writers, artists, and journalists dread and  
hate most is the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. In  
addition to its propaganda work within the party, this department,  
through its numerous bureaus, also supervises the country’s  
newspapers, publishing houses, radio and TV stations, movie industry,  
and the Internet. Except for the Military Commission, no department  
in the Party Central Committee wields more power than this office,  
which forms the core of the party’s leadership. Its absolute  
authority had gone unchallenged in the past, though even the  
Communists themselves understand the sinister role it has played. Luo  
Ruiqing, who was the first to head the Propaganda Department after  
the Communists came to power, once admitted: “To let the media serve  
politics means to tell lies, to deceive the above and delude the  
below, to defile public opinions, and to create nonsensical news.”

In recent years, however, the authority of the Propaganda Department  
has been challenged from time to time. To many Chinese, one of the  
brave figures in this regard is Jiao Guobiao, formerly a professor of  
journalism at Peking University, who in March 2004 posted on the  
Internet a long article titled “Fight Against the Party’s Propaganda  
Department.” Jiao condemns the office and its entire system as “the  
main blockage in the development of Chinese civilization,” and as  
“the protector of the evil and the corrupt.” He lists 14 illnesses  
the department has suffered, among which are its betrayal of the  
original communist ideal and its perpetuation of a Cold War mentality  
(to wit, stoking hostility toward the United States). He suggests  
that the department be dissolved, since no civilized country in the  
world has such an office. Jiao was not “disciplined” immediately, but  
later when he was on a short visit to the United States, Peking  
University claimed that he had “voluntarily quit” his teaching position.

Another challenger of the authority of the Propaganda Department is  
the writer Zhang Yihe. In early 2007, Wu Shulin, a senior official  
from the department, declared at a meeting that eight books published  
in 2006 must be banned. Most of the books are nonfiction and unveil  
some seedy sides of contemporary Chinese history. Among the banned  
titles was Zhang’s book Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars, which  
describes the vicissitudes of eight master opera singers, especially  
their sufferings and ruination after 1949, when the Communists seized  
China. When Wu Shulin issued the ban, he gave no explanation beyond  
“because the book was written by that person.” Zhang’s previous two  
books had also been banned. But she couldn’t stomach it this time and  
wrote a public letter demanding an apology from Wu Shulin and calling  
on the Propaganda Department to rescind the ban. In an interview, she  
said she would defend her book with her life. Zhang’s action caused a  
stir and was supported by the public. She tried to file a lawsuit  
against the Propaganda Department for violating her citizen’s rights  
of publication and free speech. Of course, no court dared to accept  
such a case. However, the public uproar deterred Wu Shulin, who kept  
a low profile and was apologetic in private, saying he had just  
followed instructions from above. Nevertheless, the ban has remained  
in place, and Zhang’s book is no longer available on the mainland.

To some extent, the outcome of the two incidents represents the  
current situation in China—the authorities no longer try to justify  
actions that obviously have no legal grounds, but their decisions  
remain unchanged. Why didn’t the party have the two disobedient  
individuals punished, just as it had punished tens of thousands of  
intellectuals, by banishment or imprisonment? Why didn’t they just  
silence the two troublemakers? There are three main reasons. First,  
the Communist Party, despite its powerful appearance, has become  
quite fragile, weak within. No party members believe in the ideal of  
communism anymore. Mainlanders say that those who join the party do  
so as a way “to solve the association problem.” On the one hand,  
party membership is viewed as a burdensome thing; on the other, it is  
necessary if one wants to have a good career and benefit from the  
system. In other words, the party can no longer derive any  
justification from the firm belief in its ideology, so challenges  
such as those made by Jiao and Zhang can put officials on the defensive.

Second, both Jiao and Zhang belong to the so-called elite class,  
which the authorities have avoided exasperating. After Tiananmen, the  
Communist Party adopted a relatively conciliatory position toward  
intellectuals, who can be vocal, resourceful, and troublesome. On the  
whole, the party has succeeded in buying off the intellectuals, who  
live much better than the people in the lower social strata. By not  
punishing Jiao and Zhang harshly, the party could avoid incensing the  
elite class. As long as China’s brains do not join forces with the  
rebellious masses, the country will be easier to control.

Third, Jiao and Zhang were well connected within the country and with  
the outside world, and they occupied a conspicuous spot in the public  
eye. In Jiao’s case, if his article had not been posted on the  
Internet, he couldn’t possibly have become a public figure overnight,  
and the officials could have silenced him summarily. Likewise, the  
Internet has protected some dissident intellectuals living in China,  
such as Liu Xiaobo and Yu Jie, and it has kept their voices heard by  
people inside and outside the country. If an ordinary citizen at the  
bottom of society, one of the “weed people,” posts a protest letter  
on a wall, we may never hear an echo of the writer’s voice, let alone  
know about his or her fate. Most Chinese are still not listened to,  
and the authorities often respond to the demands of peasants and  
factory workers with brute force.

In the West, contemporary Chinese movies are quite popular, but not  
many of us know that the movies we can see are not always available  
to the Chinese. The list of banned movies is long: To Live, The Blue  
Kite, Farewell to My Concubine, Bitter Love, Devils on the Doorstep.  
Even Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is classified as unsuitable for the  
general audience in China. His new film, Lust, Caution, has been  
criticized by some officials, but thanks to Ang Lee’s international  
reputation, few of them have condemned him publicly. Instead, Tang  
Wei, the leading actress in the movie, has been prohibited from  
making public appearances and from joining the casts of new movies.  
For filmmakers, a banned movie means a huge business loss and more  
difficulties in finding sponsorship for their next project. It would  
be suicidal to make two banned movies in a row, so filmmakers have to  
toe the line. This is the main reason most Chinese movies lack depth  
and complexity—they’re hamstrung at the outset by directors and  
producers having to worry about whether the final product will pass  
the censors.

In the fall of 2006, Lou Ye, a young filmmaker, took his movie Summer  
Palace to the Cannes Film Festival despite the authorities’ objection  
on the grounds that it contained scenes of Tiananmen. On his return  
to China, Lou was suspended from work, forbidden to make movies for  
five years. In fact, several directors had been subject to the same  
five-year suspension before Lou.

This summer, after the turmoil in Tibet and the earthquake in Sichuan  
in the spring and as the Olympics began, the Chinese government was  
determined to smother or muffle discordant voices. Party cadres  
follow the principle expressed by their pet phrase “nei jin wai  
song” (tense within but relaxed without). Their mild façade is a show  
for foreigners.

The authorities are more subtle in controlling book publishing. Under  
the Propaganda Department, there is an office called the General  
Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). It is this office  
whose approval every publisher, both Chinese and foreign, must obtain  
before it can publish a book or magazine in China. In officialese,  
its task is to “responsibly guard the territory” and “guarantee the  
safety of the publishing business.” gapp has a bureau in every  
province and every major city directly under the Central Government.  
All the publishing houses get book numbers, ISBNs, from gapp and must  
submit manuscripts for inspection. The officials at GAPP read  
manuscripts and order what must be cut before a book goes to the  
printer. Sometimes they demand cuts not because a book’s content is  
offensive but just because they have to cut something so that they  
won’t be held responsible if the book runs into trouble after its  
publication. To forestall trouble, gapp maintains a list of banned  
subjects, so that all publishers can understand the restrictions and  
exercise “self-discipline.” Taking their cue from rejected  
manuscripts, writers subject themselves to self-censorship. I know  
some Chinese writers living in North America whose book manuscripts  
were turned down again and again by publishers in China because the  
subject matter was “inappropriate.” The taboo subjects are numerous,  
such as the Tiananmen massacre, Tibet, the independence of Taiwan,  
the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Cultural Revolution, the Korean War,  
Chairman Mao, Falun Gong, the famine in the early 1960s.

One of the best-known works of fiction banned by the authorities is  
the novella Serve the People! published in 2005, by Yan Lianke, who  
was an officer in the People’s Army. It was censored partly because  
two lovers in the story accidentally smash a plaster statue of Mao  
Zedong, shred some Mao portraits, and tear up a volume of Mao’s  
selected writings. The authorities criticized the novella as  
“vilifying Chairman Mao, the People’s Liberation Army, and the  
revolution through excessive sexual descriptions,” so “it confuses  
people’s minds and disseminates Western ideas.” In fact, even before  
the author submitted his novella to the magazine Flower City, he had  
self-censored the work, cutting more than 40,000 of the original  
90,000 words. Then, his editor at the magazine struck out another  
10,000 words. Yan Lianke later lamented, “It doesn’t feel like a  
piece of work anymore.” Still, as soon as the novella came out, the  
Propaganda Department ordered the magazine to retrieve all 30,000  
copies of the issue. That was impossible; it had already reached  
readers. As a result, the editors—reprimanded and investigated—had to  
perform self-criticism, examining their negligence and explaining the  
whole process of the publication to gapp. Yan was lucky because he  
had just left the army, which couldn’t punish him anymore.

Actually, editors tend to be punished more severely than authors,  
some of whom are public figures. But nowadays, even editors don’t get  
disciplined as often as they used to. If the Propaganda Department  
decides to ban a book, it simply orders the publisher to stop  
shipping it and to destroy its printing plates. This robs the  
publisher of the capital already invested in the book, and the  
economic loss alone is enough to deter most publishers from bringing  
out an “offensive” book again.

Self-censorship is a necessity for most Chinese writers. There’s the  
saying, “If you eat others’ food, you cannot talk back to them,”  
which describes the writers’ existential condition. Many of them  
belong to the Writers’ Union, the official literary association that  
has a branch in every province and every major city. Some draw a  
salary directly from the union, while the majority hold jobs in state- 
owned cultural, educational, and legal institutions. That means most  
of them depend on the state for their livelihood. About the  
intellectuals, Mao Zedong often remarked, “If they don’t listen to  
us, we won’t give them food.” This kind of dependence on the state  
for one’s physical existence has handicapped Chinese writers and  
artists and intensified their self-censorship. Worse, China’s  
literary apparatus automatically excludes and isolates writers who  
are determined to exist outside it. Every now and then, some young  
writers raise a war cry against the Writers’ Union, but the truth is  
that most writers, old and young, are eager to join it.

Besides the state-owned publishing houses, some small, privately  
operated businesses have emerged in recent years. These are called  
the “second channel.” Some also pirate books by domestic and foreign  
authors. To bring out a book legally, a second channel publisher must  
get an ISBN, but GAPP makes that very difficult. So, sometimes,  
private publishers buy leftover ISBNs from state-owned publishers. At  
the moment, the second channel seems to be withering, and it has  
always been at a disadvantage. Its publishers are also intimidated by  
the authorities, and few dare to bring out politically sensitive books.

In the summer of 2004, Yuan Hongbing, a Chinese writer, defected to  
Australia, taking with him four fiction manuscripts. After Yuan’s  
novels were published abroad, some top Chinese leaders were  
flustered. Luo Gan, director of the Politics and Law Committee of the  
Chinese Communist Party at the time, went so far as to give orders to  
punish with a death sentence whoever dared to pirate the books. Li  
Changchun, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political  
Bureau, who is in charge of ideology, issued the following directive:  
“The General Administration of Press and Publications, the Border  
Police, and Customs must work closely to prevent Yuan Hongbing’s  
novels from being smuggled into the mainland. We must ponder about  
this phenomenon: For many years our party has spent a great amount of  
manpower, money, and material resources in bringing up many writers,  
but our writers have not created any work that can trump Yuan  
Hongbing’s fiction artistically.” Regardless of whether Li was  
capable of literary judgment, he did raise a serious question for the  
party. The answer is clear and simple: The system of harsh censorship  
has crippled and “sterilized” the writers and artists who exist  
within its field of force.

Facing such crippling power, few writers can remain unaffected. I had  
halfheartedly signed my five book contracts with the Shanghai  
publisher, knowing the agreement might fall through at any time. This  
lack of faith, however, enabled me to see the predicament of writers  
and artists in China. Some have become cynical, and few are willing  
to run any risk and take up significant work that requires long and  
wholehearted devotion. Many have worked on ancient subjects, seeking  
a safe living in “the musty tomes of history.” That is why there are  
so many TV plays, movies, and books based on ancient legends and  
about emperors and historical figures.

During his visit to the United States in 2006, President Hu Jintao  
said at the White House in response to a reporter’s question: “We  
always believe that without democracy there will be no  
modernization.” This admission dovetails with the dissident Wei  
Jingsheng’s call, in 1978, for the Fifth Modernization—democracy—as  
an addition to Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations. For that, Wei was  
imprisoned for 15 years. If the Communist Party is sincere about  
advocating democracy as President Hu averred, it should take steps to  
reduce the power of its Propaganda Department and eventually disband  
it. This would be an effective way to guarantee the Chinese people  
freedom of speech, which is a key component of basic human rights and  
without which any talk about democracy is mere rhetoric.

Rigid censorship not only chokes artistic talent but also weakens the  
Chinese populace, who are forced to be less imaginative and less  
inventive. The crisis in education has been a hot topic in China for  
years. Why are so many Chinese students good at taking tests but poor  
at analytical thinking? Why are many Chinese college graduates less  
creative and innovative than college graduates in the West? Besides  
the commercialization of education, the absence of a free, tolerant  
environment has stunted the intellectual growth of students and  
teachers. People often ask how many great original thinkers and  
artists modern China has contributed to the world, and how many  
original products China has created on its own. Very few, considering  
that the country has 1.3 billion people. True, China is richer than  
before, but its wealth relies on duplicating and emulating foreign  
products. Such wealth is temporary and will dwindle away. Without its  
own original cultural and material products, a country can never stay  
rich and strong. In other words, the real wealth a country has is the  
talent of its people. In the case of China, the way to nurture that  
talent is to lift the yoke of censorship.

-------------------------------------------
Ha Jin, who is a professor of English at Boston University, won the  
National Book Award in 1999 for his novel Waiting. His most recent  
novel, published last year, is A Free Life. For more on Ha Jin see  
the Wikipedia Entry at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Jin