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The Censor in the Mirror
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.
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