China Digital Times (CDT) » Tag: self-censorship

China Tightens Concert Rules After Elton John Incident

Samuel Wade — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:19:06 +0000

China has tightened requirements on visiting foreign musicians following Elton John’s dedication of a Beijing concert to the artist-activist Ai Weiwei last November. From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:

The singer’s remarks even prompted the culture minister, Cai Wu, to demand that only stars with university degrees be allowed to play in China in future, according to two sources. They said that days after the concert, Cai gathered those who deal with visiting foreign artists and announced that only graduates should be given performance licences. One source said officials believed it would be difficult to implement the edict, and both suggested it may have been a spur of the moment comment.

[…] Another source said that since the start of the year, classical musicians had been required to supply proof of degrees and other qualifications when applying for permission to tour China. “There is no doubt at all it has made things harder,” said one of those with knowledge of the meeting, adding that several recent applications for licences had been rejected.

“They are looking closely at videos, making sure that the people on stage are exactly the same as in the visa applications, and so on. It’s not a change in the rules as much as a tightening [of existing procedures].”

Prominent artists touring in China may be stuck between a rock critic and a hard place: between censure from China for making “disrespectful” political gestures, and Western condemnation for failing to. Bob Dylan faced harsh criticism in 2011 for alleged self-censorship at Chinese concerts, which according to Maureen Dowd at The New York Times was “a whole new kind of sellout — even worse than […] Elton John raking in a fortune to serenade gay-bashers at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Bob dylan, foreign music, musicians, self-censorship, visa, visa laws
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Me and My Censor

Mengyu Dong — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:43:59 +0000

At Foreign Policy, Eveline Chao recalls working with a censor as an English-language magazine editor in Beijing:

Our censor, an employee of MOFCOMM, was a nervous, flighty woman in her forties with long, frizzy hair and a high, childlike voice, whose name was Snow. (Snow requested I only use her English name for this article.) In late September of this year, I learned that Snow left the magazine, enabling me to finally write this story without fear that it would affect her job.

[…] In our December 2007 issue, we had a paragraph saying that the Chinese oil and gas giant PetroChina had been pushing forward aggressively in its overseas acquisitions. Earlier that year it had bought a 67 percent stake in PetroKazakhstan, and it had plans to buy more oil and gas assets in Africa, Northern Europe, and Southeast Asia. Snow wrote, “Better to delete, it is an oral request that the energy sector’s overseas acquisition is not encouraged to report.” In other words, we wouldn’t find any overt directives in writing anywhere, but those in the know understood that this subject was touchy.

All of this pointed to the petty human dynamics that underscored the censorship. The things Snow flagged were rarely taboo because of any overt directive from above. More often, it seemed to me that she thought it might offend another government ministry, which would bring retaliation upon her own ministry. Or, if Snow personally didn’t find a statement sensitive, she worried that her boss might, or her boss thought that his boss might. Everyone was guessing where the line fell, taking two steps back from it to be extra safe, and self-censoring accordingly.

A similar pattern can be seen ahead of next month’s 18th Party Congress in Beijing, where fruit knives have been removed from store shelves and window handles from the rear doors of taxis. Li Dan, of the Dongjen Center for Human Rights Education, told the Los Angeles Times’ Barbara Demick that “it has become a habit over the years. At the lower levels, officials are afraid they will be punished if anything goes wrong at a crucial moment. There is always, every year, some big reason they claim they cannot be relaxed.”

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreign investment in media, media censorship, media corruption, press freedom, self-censorship
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Is Winter Coming For The Chinese News Media?

Scott Greene — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:30:46 +0000

Tea Leaf Nation’s Yueran Zhang explores the shifting winds in the Chinese news media, where a number of “personnel earthquakes” have seen influential members of the country’s independent media leave or be forced out of their positions this year:

On July 18, the publication’s president and vice editor-in-chief were dismissed for unspecified reasons. Some rumors said the direct cause might be the Daily’s interview with Sheng Hong (@盛洪微博), president of Tianze Economics Institute, which was published in May. In the interview, Prof. Sheng acutely criticized the monopoly of state-owned companies in certain markets.

The misfortune has also befallen other media brands. On July 16, the editor-in-chief of the News Express Daily (@新快报) was forced to resign because of unspecified “sensitive” contents it had published. On August 23, the Oriental Vanguard (@东方卫报) published on its front page a feature article titled “Liu Xiang knew, officials knew, China Central Television knew, only the audience was waiting vainly for the legendary moment.” The article said that official heads of the Chinese Olympic Team, China Central Television (CCTV) and Liu Xiang himself had all known beforehand that his severe injury might render him unable to finish the preliminary heats of the Olympic Men’s 110-meter Hurdles, and CCTV had prepared four commentating plans accordingly. The report caused the editor-in-chief, the assistant editor-in-chief and the so-called “news supervisors” (新闻总监) to be dismissed.

Although the government’s control over news media has always been tight, the range and intensity of the purge this year has been rarely seen, suggesting that the censors’ controlling hand is tightening. As Wang Keqin (@王克勤), a former investigative journalist famous for his coverage of AIDS spread and illegal mining plants, comments, “It’s getting colder. The winter is approaching.”

Zhang’s piece stirred up a lively debate in Chinese social media, even drawing comments from journalists such as Liu Jianfeng who had received mention in the article:

For some readers, the reality of Chinese journalism revealed by the article deepens their hopelessness. @时评人黄国胜 is one of them, writing, “It’s so difficult to be an authentic journalist in China!” More directly, @新闻已死 (whose handle name literally means, “the news is dead”) declares the “death of Chinese journalism.” “There is no ‘news’ in China, only ‘propaganda.’”

Even more saddened are those who used to work in journalism. They said the piece reminded them of their unpleasant past. @高压锅老窝 writes, “If you worked in the media industry for a few days, you would not trust anything.” @雪峰NO1 attributes the mistrust to the tradition of telling lies in Chinese journalism. “Journalism is a high-risk occupation. Maybe just by accident, a disaster can befall you. Unless you follow your superior and tell lies, you are punished. It’s the destiny of journalists.”

…

With the persistence and idealism he still holds, Liu rejects the pessimistic notion that Chinese journalists could pursue nothing but “dead journalism.” “Don’t be so pessimistic. There are always still courageous and uncompromised reporters who tell the truth. Those who claim that ‘there is no news in China’ are the ones who cannot endure the pressure and give up. If your pieces are killed, you can still publish them online. Is there worse outcome than being fired? As far as I know, many dare to do that.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, independent media, media control, microblogs, self-censorship, sina weibo, state media
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Self-Censorship, Academia, and Beijing’s Visa Regime

Scott Greene — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:59:32 +0000

Though his own experiences have been positive, The Diplomat’s James R. Holmes laments the “chilling effect” that Beijing has on the scholarly community by denying visas and valued access to potential critics:

In effect Beijing sets individuals’ career incentives against their commitment to principle, and trusts that the former will win out. Who doesn’t think of his livelihood and family first? Researchers who fear being denied visas may self-censor their words in order not to offend. Or they may abjure sensitive topics—Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen being the unholy trinity—altogether. Abstract principle just isn’t worth the risk to one’s tenure, promotion, or other career milestones. Better to keep to safer, apolitical ground.

In Pentagon-speak, withholding visas for any reason, or for no reason at all, represents an easy, cost-free way for Beijing to “shape” the intellectual climate in a more “permissive” direction.

Holmes references an article on China studies from National Review, by Jay Nordlinger, which has more on the visa headwinds faced by China scholars:

Possibly the most maddening, and effective, aspect of China’s approach to visas is its randomness, or seeming randomness: You never know when the boom will be lowered — on whom and why. The Chinese will allow a foreign scholar to criticize as he pleases, and come and go as he pleases, and then, one day: boom. “You know the reason. We don’t have to tell you.” In 2002, Perry Link wrote a well-known essay called “The Anaconda in the Chandelier.” The Chinese state is not like a snarling tiger or fire-breathing dragon in your living room (although it certainly can be that, for Chen Guangcheng and other dissidents). It’s more like “a giant anaconda coiled in an overhead chandelier. Normally the great snake doesn’t move. It doesn’t have to. It feels no need to be clear about its prohibitions. Its constant silent message is ‘You yourself decide,’ after which, more often than not, everyone in its shadow makes his or her large and small adjustments — all quite ‘naturally.’”

Journalists face the same challenges, as Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan experienced earlier this year. For Washington City Paper, Will Sommer reports that the Washington Post’s visa-less China bureau chief will be headed elsewhere after reporting on China from the outside for three years:

So much for the Washington Post’s three-year long attempt to actually get its China bureau chief into China. Ever since the Post hired Andrew Higgins in 2009, the paper has been trying to convince the Chinese government to grant him a visa, even enlisting the services of Henry Kissinger at one point.

The Chinese, you see, haven’t forgiven Higgins for reporting on dissidents that earned him a boot from the country in 1991. That hasn’t stopped Higgins from covering China—he follows the Chinese impact on the Asian countries he can travel to, and judging from his datelines, he can still go to Hong Kong.

But Higgins won’t need those workarounds any more. According to an internal newsroom memo sent out this afternoon by Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl, a still visaless Higgins is leaving the paper to cover Europe for the New York Times.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Academia, foreign reporters, immigration, self-censorship, visa laws
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Hexie Farm (蟹农场): The Wall

Sophie Beach — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:43:18 +0000

For his latest entry to his CDT series, cartoonist Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm depicts the invisible walls of censorship and self-censorship, as well as dictatorship and servility. The dictator is barking commands which the figures underneath obey.

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

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Post tags: censorship, Great Firewall, hexie farm, self-censorship
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Sina Weibo’s New Rules

josh rudolph — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:38:00 +0000

A moderator account (“Weibo Secretary” [微博小秘书]) on China’s popular microblog Sina Weibo recently made public the draft of a “Community Convention” [zh] with the following tweet:

Weibo Secretary: Dear netizens, in order to maintain order in the Weibo community, we are establishing open and transparent mechanisms to deal with violators of our regulations. Today we are issuing the “Sina Weibo Community Convention (Trial)”, along with the “Community Management Regulations (Trial)” and the “Community Committee System (Trial).” The above regulations will take effect on May 28th, 2012, at which time corresponding features will go live. Order is something that we all must work together to maintain. Read the new policies in their entirety at http://t.cn/zO8hGBj

Since this tweet went up on May 8th at 3pm Beijing time, there have been over 30,000 comments. The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Chin surveys public reaction to the announcement:

Among the thousands of users who responded to the draft document, many said they approved, with some arguing that the proposed set of rules would help manage what they said was an increasing proliferation of rumors and obscene content on the website. “Preserving the good atmosphere on Sina Weibo requires everyone to work hard together,” wrote angel investor Cai Wensheng, who boasts more than 3.5 million followers.

Sina Weibo celebrity and former head of Google’s China operations Kai-Fu Lee also put himself in the approval camp, responding with a simple: “Agree, support!”

Others weren’t so sure. Among those who appeared to hedge was real estate mogul Pan Shiyi, who said it was good to have rules to refer to but added a question: “Does this mean there won’t be any more arbitrary take-downs?”

Still others actively attacked Sina’s new regulations for aping the deliberately vague officialese found in government legal documents, arguing that the definitions of disallowed content are broad enough to legitimize almost any act of censorship. “All this does is provide an excuse for arbitrary take-downs,” real estate executive Sun Xuguang wrote in response to Mr. Pan.

[...]Another user, meanwhile, had a suggestion for a much simpler solution: “Isn’t there a list of sensitive words you can give to everyone so they can consult it before posting?”

After Sina’s failed attempt to fully implement the state regulated “real-name registration“ policy, these conventions are the latest step to codify and control sensitive online content in an effort to thwart a government crackdown on the site. Caijing English has translated and published the entire mandate for self-censorship, paying special attention to Article 13, the section hazily defining sensitive content:

In Article 13, the contract lists nearly ten kinds of information users are not allowed to publish on Weibo, including that “harms the unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of the nation” and that “spreads rumors, disrupts social order, and destroys societal stability.”

[...]Article 13) Users have the right to publish information, but may not publish any information that:

1.Opposes the basic principles established by the constitution
2.Harms the unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of the nation
3.Reveals national secrets, endangers national security, or threatens the the honor or interests of the nation
4.Incites ethnic hatred or ethnic discrimination, undermines ethnic unity, or harms ethnic traditions and customs
5.Promotes evil teachings and superstitions
6.Spreads rumors, disrupts social order, and destroys societal stability
7.Promotes illicit activity, gambling, violence, or calls for the committing of crimes
8.Calls for disruption of social order through illegal gatherings, formation of organizations, protests, demonstrations, mass gatherings and assemblies
9.Has other content which is forbidden by laws, administrative regulations and national regulations.

This is not the first time that Sina has altered its operating policy to satisfy the state. When recent rumors of a coup in Beijing began spreading after the sacking of former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, Sina temporarily disabled their comment feature upon state orders. While cyberspace may always be seen as a breeding ground for rumors and sensitive content, government paranoia is mounting in an atmosphere of political instability and as the (possibly postponed) once-in-a-decade leadership transition approaches.

Also see prior CDT coverage of censorship, self-censorship, and Sina Weibo. For more on sensitive content, see CDT’s “Sensitive Words” series.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Internet regulation, microblogs, self-censorship, sina weibo
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Rebecca MacKinnon at TEDGlobal: Let’s take back the Internet!

Samuel Wade — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 02:34:55 +0000

Global Voices Online founder Rebecca MacKinnon spoke at the ongoing TEDGlobal conference about cultivating the “citizen-centric” evolution of the Internet. She argues that “the relationship between citizens and government is mediated through the Internet, which is comprised primarily of privately owned and operated services”, and begins by contrasting Apple’s “1984″ Superbowl ad with its more recent removal of the Dalai Lama’s iPhone app from the Chinese App Store.

“Now, in China, you have the “great firewall”, as it’s well known, that blocks Facebook and Twitter and now Google+ and many other overseas websites, and that’s done in part with the help from Western technology, but that’s only half of the story.

“The other part of the story are requirements that the Chinese government places on all companies operating on the Chinese Internet known as a system of self-discipline—in plain English, that means censorship and surveillance of their users. And this is a ceremony I actually attended in 2009 where the Internet Society of China presented awards to the top 20 companies which are best at exercising self-discipline, i.e. policing their content, and Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, was one of the recipients.”

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Post tags: Apple, Baidu, Dalai Lama, Facebook, Google, Internet censorship, Internet Society of China, iPhone, Robin Li, self-censorship, Twitter
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Video: Dancing With Shackles On

Samuel Wade — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:42:07 +0000

Dancing With Shackles On (via Danwei) is a new short film (16:23 about censorship and self-censorship on the Chinese Internet by Desiree Marianini and Janek Zdzarski, including interviews with Wang Xiaofeng, Qi Youyi, Jeremy Goldkorn and Keso.

Dancing with shackles on from Janek Zdzarski on Vimeo.

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Post tags: censorship, Internet blocking, Jeremy Goldkorn, Keso, qi youy, self-censorship, wang xiaofeng
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China: The Risk of Shutting Up Sina Weibo is Zero!?

Sophie Beach — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:46:35 +0000

Global Voices Online translates web users comments about the future of Sina’s microblogging service in the wake of heightened censorship following calls for a so-called Jasmine Revolution:

…The issue at stake is probably not whether Sina Weibo will be able to survive, but on Sina Weibo users’ toleration of its censorship practice.
Predictably, censorship measures have resulted in a tense relationship between the company and its users. When the government tightens it control over online speech, and Weibo as a result has to suffer in order to survive under the censorship system, the conflict intensifies.

[...] Which helps explain why Sina deputy director Chen Tong (under the username Lao Chen 老沉) popped up in the Sina Tech News’ Weibo thread this morning, claiming that the chance of Sina Weibo being shut down within next 20 years is 0%. Many Weibo users reacted strongly to his assertion, and criticized the current self-censorship practices.

Here is a selection of comments:

[...] 山上没有神仙新浪在党的领导下是不会被关闭的.(今天 09:17)

No Fairies on the Mountain: Under the leadership of the Party (CCP), Sina will not be shut down. (Today 09:17)

孙卡拉被叫停风险还是有的，被公众抛弃的风险也是有的。(今天 09:20)

Sun Kala: There is a risk of Weibo getting shut down, and there is also a risk of people abandoning it. (Today 09:20)

钟启华_cola 只会阉，不会关。外国投行真是扯蛋，对中国缺乏基本常识。就这理解能力，中国网络股在美国怎么跌怎么涨都正常。叫停风险0.2%都不到，别说两成了。与其担心政策风险，担心盈利模式更实在。(今天 09:20)

Amazing China_cola: It will only be castrated and will not shut down. Foreign investment banks are talking bullshit. They don’t have any common sense about China. That’s why it is normal for the stock value to go up and down. The risk is less than 0.2%, the worry should not be over censorship regulations but on having a profit-making model. (Today 09:20)

丹青兰被关闭的概率很小，不超过10%，但被监控，被整改的可能性是实实在在存在滴 (今天 09:21)

Orchid Painting: The chance of Weibo getting shut down is very small, less than 10%. But monitoring and manipulation is part of the reality. (Today 09:21)

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Post tags: Internet censorship, jasmine revolution, microblogs, self-censorship, sina weibo
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Han Han (韩寒): Those Onions Which Never Get Clean

Sophie Beach — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:15:18 +0000

China Elections and Governance has translated Han Han’s latest blog post, in which he tackles higher education, brain-washing, and self-censorship:

News reporters search for the truth; history teachers narrate history; authors and scholars write a little about the truth; movie directors film reality. At best they are committing erroneous thought; at worst they are going down a road of crime. But as soon as one person has speculated, many people will follow: was this person drunk by coffee, was this person blocked, was this person arrested. As a result, even though it is often the case that nothing really big happened to the person–at most the criminal evidence has been eliminated– people still do not feel at ease, but are instead even more worried about themselves. They feel that maybe those other people were too well known, the government had concerns—if the government doesn’t come for me, isn’t that because they’re not concerned about me? What kind of deeply rooted image is this? How much watering time does it take to grow up into this?

In any age, brains are washed just like vegetables, and there are always a few onions that just won’t come clean. Before, people wanted to cut up these onions to make them clean, but as times changed, these people can only require that those few dirty onions grow up with each looking after itself. But if you try to tell that to other onions, they will immediately wait to be squashed.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: education, Han Han, self-censorship
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Global Times: Publish and Be Deleted

Sophie Beach — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:32:17 +0000

Global Times’ English edition has a lengthy and candid report on Internet regulations and self-censorship by Douban and other websites:

Self-censorship is the rule of survival that prevents popular websites from being shut down, Zoe Wang, a veteran website developer told the Global Times.

“I can understand an author being outraged when his post gets deleted, but it’s even harder to operate a website as I have to suffer the humiliation of supervisory organs and handle all the criticisms coming from users,” she said.

“How can you hope to pay your staff or maintain your users’ statistics if the website is shut down all because of one sensitive post?”

“You can never relax,” said the small website operator.

“You’re always keeping your phone switched on and waiting for that emergency call from the authorities requiring deletion of a post.”

What’s worse, she said, was the complete absence of clear-cut rules for deciding whether or not to delete an online post.

…There are 14 general laws and regulations governing illegal online behavior, all vague and lacking in detailed, practical provisions, according to Li Yonggang, a professor of Internet politics from Nan-jing University, in his newly published book Our Great Firewall: Expression and Governance in the Era of the Internet.

“As a result, it’s difficult to draw a line when operators and Web users censor, apart from the well-known restricted field of political issues,” he wrote.

There are more than 10 government organs entitled to supervise the Internet, Li said. This inevitably gives rise to conflicts, he believed.

Bans are also increasingly unpredictable, he said. Recipients receive no explanation and no comeback. Chinese mainland Web users tend to react with a pessimistic, alienated and impotent attitude.

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Post tags: Douban, Internet censorship, Internet regulation, self-censorship
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China Launches Strict New Internet Controls (With Photo)

Sophie Beach — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:21:02 +0000

Anyone who wants to open a website in China now has to have a face-to-face meeting with regulators first, AP reports:

The state-sanctioned group that registers domain names in China froze registrations for new individual Web sites in December after state media complained that not enough was being done to check whether sites provided pornographic content.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that ban was being lifted, but would-be operators would now have submit their identity cards and photos of themselves as well as meet in person with regulators and representatives of service providers before their sites could be registered.

It said the rule was aimed at cracking down on pornography.

China has the world’s biggest online population, with 384 million Internet users. The government operates the world’s most extensive system of Web monitoring and filtering, blocking pornographic sites as well as those seen as subversive to communist rule.

ChinaZ.com, a community website for webmasters reported the photo requirement and process with the following actual photo:

Update: From LA Times:

“Internet security needs to be cured from its roots,” Li Yizhong, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, was quoted as saying in a state news article Sunday.

Critics say the new requirement has little to do with pornography and instead serves to increase controls and discourage web users from engaging in any activity that challenged the government.

For all its complexity, experts say the key to the government’s controls is not its filtering technology or registration requirements, but the willingness of individuals to censor themselves.

“This new measure comes as no surprise, since a key element of control has always been about how to use disciplinary punishment and surveillance to create a self-censorship environment,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley. “The government feels increasingly insecure with their ability to control the Internet, therefore more and more policies and controlling practices are aimed at enhancing a self-policing environment.”

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Post tags: Internet control, Internet regulation, photos, self-censorship, Xiao Qiang
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Blogging Judge Sues Over Pulled Plug

Liu Yong — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:12:03 +0000

From China Daily:

A judge in Jianshi county, Hubei province, is suing one of the country’s largest information portals after it shut down his blog for comments he posted accusing the Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) of awarding him an unrecognized diploma.

Huang Zhijian, 37, a judge with the people’s court of Jianshi’s Guandian township, submitted a written petition to Beijing’s Haidian district court last Sunday. It requires Beijing-based and NASDAQ-listed Sina.com to stop “violating his copyright”, lift the block on his articles, post an apology on its homepage and compensate him 10,000 yuan ($1,462) for losses.

“Access to my blog entries was blocked from late May. Dozens of my complaints to the company’s customer service department only drew a simple e-mail saying the content of my blogs was sensitive. It refused to recover the text,” Huang said.

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Post tags: bloggers, lawsuits, self-censorship, sina
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Web Users Fault China’s Baidu

Liu Yong — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:05:29 +0000

From Wall Street Journal:

Chinese Internet-search company Baidu.com Inc. has been defending itself against claims in the media and Internet chat forums that it allegedly censored online information about the growing scandal over tainted milk powder.

The company, which runs China’s largest search engine by market share, has faced criticism from users of popular sites such as online community Tianya.com and forum host Mop.com. The users accuse the company of working on behalf of milk producers to bury online links to news stories about the contamination that has killed several infants and sickened thousands of children.

Baidu acknowledged it was approached by several dairy producers who offered to pay the company to drop critical news articles from its search results. Baidu said it “flat out refused” to screen unfavorable news.

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Post tags: Baidu, milk contamination, self-censorship
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Book Store Pulls Book from Shelves after Student Suicides

cschultz — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:33:51 +0000

From the Times of India

A spate of suicides and attempted suicides by children in China’s biggest city at the start of the school year has prompted at least one bookseller to pull a popular cartoon book off the shelves.

The decision by Bookuu Book City in Shanghai to take Chinese-language version of the “Book of Bunny Suicides: Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don’t Want to Live Anymore” — a sometimes morbid but humorous collection of cartoons showing a rabbit attempting to end his life in various bizarre ways, reflects unease and soul-searching over the pressures on Chinese students.

“We took the ‘Bunny Suicides’ cartoon books off our shelves because we’re worried that children might try to imitate some of those ways of killing themselves,” said Zhu Bin, a public relations officer for the bookseller.

Read more from Times of India; the Daily Mail; and Wikipedia.

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Post tags: Book of Bunny Suicides, self-censorship, suicide
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