{"id":535,"date":"2013-01-18T17:35:29","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T16:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/?p=535"},"modified":"2013-01-18T17:35:29","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T16:35:29","slug":"censored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/?p=535","title":{"rendered":"Censored"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2002 I published an article\u00a0about\u00a0Liu Xiaofeng<\/a>\u00a0(\u5218\u5c0f\u67ab)\u00a0in the magazine\u00a0\u4e66\u57ce<\/a>\u00a0(Book Town), and they cut one or two sentences where I had mentioned Liu Xiaobo (\u5218\u6653\u6ce2), without notifying me in advance. That was the only experience I had personally of Chinese censorship, until now.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of 2012 I attended a conference in China and presented a paper on religion as a factor for building ”harmonious society”, also making comparisons with the Nordic revival movements and building a democratic ”harmonious” welfare society (\u798f\u5229\u793e\u4f1a) in Sweden. Just at the end of the year a journal affiliated to the university arranging the conference sent me an e-mail saying in English that they had selected mine and a few other articles for publication. It is a good Chinese journal, listed with Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI \u4e2d\u6587\u793e\u4f1a\u79d1\u5b66\u5f15\u6587\u7d22\u5f15<\/a>), and with international ambitions, so I was glad to hear they liked my article. I worked on it for some time and then submitted again.<\/p>\n

Just over a week ago I received an e-mail from the same editorial department, in Chinese, and only signed ”the editorial department”. The subject was ”return of manuscript” (\u9000\u7a3f), and the main content was that mine and a few other articles ”cannot quite agree with the requirements of the journal” (\u4e0d\u662f\u5f88\u80fd\u5951\u5408\u5b66\u520a\u7684\u8981\u6c42). First I was very puzzled, but then I realized that I had been censored (\u5ba1\u67e5). Not just a few lines here and there, but the whole article.<\/p>\n

I wrote directly to the editors, expressed my surprise and asked for an explanation. No answer came. I wrote again, a second and a third time, and only then there was an answer, ten days after the original e-mail. This was an actual apology, and even an explanation of the pressure they had got not to publish mine and a few other articles as they were ”too sensitive”. Who was giving pressure? I don’t know. Maybe there was no one, but merely self-censorship. It is very discomforting and disturbing to experience such a thing from persons you know and trust.<\/p>\n

Having studied China for more than 20 years I know that such things, unfortunately, are everyday matters (!) in China, and I have heard friends telling me many stories about it. But how to deal with it as a non-Chinese researcher? I cannot censor myself. Should I not\u00a0publish in Chinese journals? I think that an ”as if” stance like the one taken by Geremie R. Barm\u00e9 and the Australian\u00a0Centre on China in the World<\/a>\u00a0can be the answer:<\/p>\n

\u2026to act as if the People\u2019s Republic had already sloughed off the vestiges of Cold War-era and Maoist attitudes, behaviour and language. We engage with the People\u2019s Republic as if it enjoyed an environment like that of any other mature, open and equitable society.<\/p>\n

The quote is from a letter written by Barm\u00e9<\/a> as an answer to criticism from the Chinese embassy in Canberra to the content of the Centre yearbook 2012,\u00a0Red Rising\u00a0<\/em>Red Eclipse<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2002 I published an article\u00a0about\u00a0Liu Xiaofeng\u00a0(\u5218\u5c0f\u67ab)\u00a0in the magazine\u00a0\u4e66\u57ce\u00a0(Book Town), and they cut one or two sentences where I had mentioned Liu Xiaobo (\u5218\u6653\u6ce2), without notifying me in advance. That was the only experience I had personally of Chinese censorship, until now. Towards the end of 2012 I attended a conference in China and presented … <\/p>\n

Forts\u00e4tt l\u00e4sa \u201dCensored\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kinafunderingar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2crM2-censored","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boke.fallmankonsult.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}