In the New York Times, Emily Parker writes about the willingness of foreigners who work with China to censor themselves rather than offend the regime. She begins by describing the cold reception that author Denise Chong got when promoting her book Egg on Mao: The Story of an Ordinary Man Who Defaced an Icon and Unmasked a Dictatorship
Taken in isolation, these incidents may seem minor, but they are part of a much larger trend. As China’s influence spreads throughout the world, so does a willingness to play by its rules. In March, Google shut down its Internet search service in mainland China, saying it no longer wanted to self-censor its search results to comply with “local” law. But these laws may not be local anymore. Interviews with a number of writers and China watchers suggest that Chinese censorship is becoming an increasingly borderless phenomenon.
“I remember clearly the days when you could safely assume that as long as you wrote something abroad, it was free and clear from repercussions within China,” said Orville Schell, the director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations (where I am a fellow) and author of nine books on China. One turning point, he said, was the growth of the Internet, which increasingly unites the once “discrete worlds” of Chinese and Western reading material. Another factor is the growing business entanglement between China and the rest of the world.
“Suddenly we’re all Hong Kong, where no one wants to offend the mainland because it’s too close,” Schell said.
Read more about China’s efforts to export censorship, via CDT.
