After the Chinese Communist Party announced that it is doing away with presidential term limits, Beijing temporarily censored social media references to George Orwell’s dystopian books 1984 and Animal Farm. However, the books were not banned from being sold in bookstores.
Chinese censors have banned books that contain positive or neutral portrayal of Dalai Lama, but fiction titles famous for the theme of authoritarianism like Brave New World are not prohibited. The possible assumption of theirs is that the small amount of people who would read 1984 is not much of a threat to the system. The government also understands that the highly educated citizens can acquire information easily from abroad so there is not point in restricting such access.
Censorship in China is not as comprehensive as commentators often make it out to be. Grey areas exist in the medium of through which contentious topics are discussed in public space. However, most of the time, we can expect discourse on Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen to be strictly out of bounds.
Read the full article on The Atlantic: Why 1984 Isn’t Banned in China
Analysis:
The Communist Party, like many governments, are cognizant of the power of words and media to rally masses. People armed with with information and knowledge can spread different ideologies to other people. What they would be afraid of is their citizens having a negative view of them. Hence, they impose strict controls on discourse about historical events such as the catastrophic Great Leap Forward and Tiananmen Square Incident.
Every society has its own set of banned books and films. What may be deemed obscene or undesirable for one society may not be held in the same regard in another. Book burning – an unfortunate act of cultural genocide – has also long existed in history as a tool to suppress dissenting or heretical views perceived to pose a threat to those in power.
Questions for further personal evaluation:
- Do you know what books are banned in Singapore?
- How do you feel about governments’ tight control over media and certain content that they deem undesirable?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘abolition’: the action of ending a system, practice, or institution
- ‘excised’: having been removed from a text or piece of music
- ‘imminent’: about to happen
- ‘tendentious’: expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one
Picture credits: https://pixabay.com/en/china-land-smartphone-search-3303411/