Kowtowing to China's Despots

How China is winning the battle to censor the world view of Taiwan
By Michael Smith

Alan Joyce at the IATA conference in Sydney this week. Qantas will be criticised for kowtowing to China over Taiwan's sovereignty. 

It turns out even a street address can be considered subversive in politically-sensitive China, particularly during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
China's popular taxi-hailing app Didi was this week refusing to accepting my home address as a pick-up destination because it contains the numerals "6" and "4" -- a combination censors fear could refer to June 4, 1989 -- the date of the deadly student protests in Beijing.
Several attempts to type in the address were blocked and followed by a message which said the content contained "sensitive words".
China typically tightens internet censorship in early June, banning words such as "tank" or even combinations of numerals adding up to 64.
However, this was the first time I had heard of the Uber-like taxi service banning particular pick-up addresses.
The incident highlights the lengths to which China will go to erase events it would prefer not to see in the history books.

A candlelight vigil for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong's Victoria Park this week. China has written the event out of its history. 

It also demonstrates the futile battle Qantas would have faced if it had decided to stand up to Beijing on another sensitive issue - Taiwan.
The airline was in the cross-hairs of Sino-Australian political tensions this week after chief executive Alan Joyce told an international airline conference the carrier would change the way it refers to self-ruled Taiwan in its public material following China's objections.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull backed Joyce's decision, while Foreign Minister Julie Bishop took issue with China telling Australian companies what to do.
The last thing Qantas, or any other company wants, is to get caught into the middle of a complex political spat between Canberra and Beijing.
These challenges are not new.
The Australian Financial Review first reported Qantas's decision to change the way it described some destinations on its website on January 15.
"Due to an oversight, some Chinese territories were incorrectly listed as 'countries' on parts of our website. We are correcting this error," the airline said at the time.
Beijing now wants airlines to add "China" in brackets after references to Taiwan in their list of destinations.
It is a lose-lose situation.
On one hand, Qantas will be criticised for kowtowing to China over Taiwan's sovereignty.
On the other, the airline has a responsibility to shareholders to protect its business interests in China -- which is now the biggest source of tourists to Australia.
Qantas, which has a partnership with China Eastern Airlines, would prefer the whole issue to go away.
Joyce notes he is merely adopting the Australian government's position on China.
While the chief executive has taken a stand on other social issues such as gay marriage, Taiwan's sovereignty is not a battle his shareholders would want him to take on.
Qantas is not alone.
China's aviation regulator wrote to around 36 other global airlines expressing its displeasure with the way they referred to Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong in their public material.
Eighteen airlines have not yet responded.
While the US government -- which denounced Beijing's displeasure as "Orwellian nonsense" -- has urged its carriers to dig in their heels, many other carriers in Asia are complying.
Garuda Indonesia, Asiana Airlines, Philippine Airlines, Lufthansa, Air Canada and British Airways all have changed the way they refer to Taiwan, according to local media.
Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific refer to Taiwan as a "destination".
The list of other companies scrambling to appease China is also growing.
US retailer Gap, Japan's Muji and the Marriott Hotel group have made changes to material after pressure from China.
Australian infant milk group Bellamy's said in January it was changing a reference to Hong Kong on its corporate website.
China considers Taiwan a breakaway province and will not have diplomatic relations with countries that recognise it as a separate nation.
It is now effectively using its economic clout to freeze out companies that do the same thing.
"There is only one China in the world and Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau have always been parts of China," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said this week.
While many in the international community do not agree with this position, foreign governments as well as companies such as Qantas feel powerless to change it.
The US is the major exception.
Like its ability to erase references to Tiananmen Square within China, Beijing's ability to change the way the rest of the world refers to other sensitive issues such as Taiwan's independence is worrying for many.

Perfidious Albion

Cambridge University Press faces backlash after bowing to China censorship pressure
By Simon Denyer

A student walks through the quadrangle of King's College, Cambridge, Nov. 24, 2005. 

BEIJING — Cambridge University Press faces a major backlash from academics after bowing to Chinese government demands to censor an important academic journal.
CUP announced Friday it had removed 300 articles and book reviews from a version of the “China Quarterly” website available in China at the request of the government.
The articles touched on topics deemed sensitive to the Communist Party, including the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, policies towards Tibetan and Uighur ethnic minorities, Taiwan and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
The articles would still be available on a version of China Quarterly accessible outside China.
The demand to remove the articles came from China’s General Administration of Press and Publication, which warned that if they were not removed the entire website would be made unavailable in China.
But academics around the world have accused CUP of selling out and becoming complicit in censoring Chinese academic debate and history.
In an open letter published on Medium.com, James A. Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University called the decision “a craven, shameful and destructive concession” to the People’s Republic of China’s growing censorship regime.
Millward said the decision overruled the peer-review process and the views of editors about what should be in the journal and was a “clear violation of academic independence inside and outside China.”
He added it was akin to the New York Times or the Economist publishing versions of their papers inside China omitting content deemed offensive to the Party. 

“And as my colleagues Greg Distelhorst and Jessica Chen Weiss have written, ‘the censored history of China will literally bear the seal of Cambridge University.’”
“It is noteworthy that the topics and peoples CUP has so blithely chosen to censor comprise mainly minorities and the politically disadvantaged. Would you censor content about Black Lives Matter, Mexican immigrants or Muslims in your American publication list if Trump asked you to do to?,” he asked.
In a tweet, James Leibold, an associate professor at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, whose scholarship about the Xinjiang region was among the censored articles, called the decision “a shameful act."
And a petition is now circulating among academics warning that Cambridge University Press could face a boycott if it continues to acquiesce to the Chinese government’s demands.
“It is disturbing to academics and universities worldwide that China is attempting to export its censorship on topics that do not fit its preferred narrative,” Christopher Balding, an associate professor at Peking University HSBC School of Business in Shenzhen, China, the petition’s originator, wrote.
“If Cambridge University Press acquiesces to the demands of the Chinese government, we as academics and universities reserve the right to pursue other actions including boycotts of Cambridge University Press and related journals.”
The petition requests that only academics and people working in higher education sign, and give their affiliation. 

By Monday afternoon in China it had attracted 290 signatures on change.org although it could not be immediately established how many signatories were academics.
In a statement, CUP said it has complied with the initial request “to ensure that other academic and educational materials we publish remain available to researchers and educators in this market.”
It added it had planned meetings “to discuss our position with the relevant agencies” at the Beijing Book Fair this week.

Experts said the decision was part of a broader crackdown on free expression in China under Xi Jinping that has intensified this year as the Communist Party becomes more confident and less inclined to compromise.

In the past, China's system of censorship, nicknamed the Great Firewall of China, has concentrated mainly on Chinese-language material, and has been less preoccupied with blocking English-language material, which is accessed only by a narrow elite. 

But that may now be changing.
“The China Quarterly is very reputable within academic circles, and it does not promote the "positive" energy that China wants to see,” said Qiao Mu, a former professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University who was demoted and ultimately left the university after criticizing the government. 

“Instead, it touches on historical reflection, talks about Cultural Revolution and other errors that China has made in the past. These are things that China does not like and does not want to be discussed.”
Qiao said the decision would have a negative effect on already limited academic freedom in China.

“For Chinese academics, the effect is mainly psychological,” he said. 

“They will think more when doing research and impose stricter self-censorship.”
Internet companies have also faced similar dilemmas: Google chose to withdraw from China rather than submit to censorship, and has been displaced here by a censored Chinese search engine, Baidu.com. 

But LinkedIn has submitted to censorship and continues to operate here. 

Apple recently complied with a demand from the Chinese government to remove many VPN (virtual private network) applications that netizens use to access blocked websites, from its App Store in China.
Millward argued that Cambridge as a whole has more power than it perhaps realized in a battle of wills with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“China is not going to ban everything branded ‘Cambridge’ from the Chinese realm, because to do so would turn this into a big, public issue, and that is precisely what the authorities hope to avoid,” he wrote.
“To do so would, moreover, pit the CCP against a household name that every Chinese person who knows anything about education reveres as one of the world’s oldest and best universities. And Chinese, probably more than anyone else, revere universities, especially name-brand ones.
Cambridge University Press has made available a complete list of the censored articles here.

Academic Prostitution

Cambridge University Press faces boycott over China censorship

By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Cambridge University Press was urged to refuse censorship requests for not only its China Quarterly journal but also any other topics or publications. 

Cambridge University Press must reject China’s “disturbing” censorship demands or face a potential boycott of its publications, academics have warned.
In a petition published on Monday, academics from around the world denounced China’s attempts to “export its censorship on topics that do not fit its preferred narrative”.
The appeal came after it emerged that Cambridge University Press (CUP), the world’s oldest publishing house, had complied with a Chinese instruction to block online access to more than 300 politically sensitive articles from its highly respected China Quarterly journal. 

The blacklisted articles covered topics including Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen massacre and the cult of personality some claim is emerging around Xi Jinping.
The petition attacked CUP’s move and urged it “to refuse the censorship request not just for the China Quarterly but on any other topics, journals or publication that have been requested by the Chinese government”.
“If Cambridge University Press acquiesces to the demands of the Chinese government, we as academics and universities reserve the right to pursue other actions including boycotts of Cambridge University Press and related journals,” it added.
The author of the petition, Peking University economics professor Christopher Balding, said he hoped it would serve as an alert to how China had dramatically stepped up its efforts to stifle free thinking since Xi became its top leader in 2012and began a severe crackdown on academia and civil society. 

“I think this is an increasing problem that really needs to be addressed much more forcefully by the international academic community,” he said.
Balding complained that while it was fashionable for academics and publishers to attack US president Donald Trump, they were far more cautious about criticising Xi’s authoritarian regime for fear of reprisals. 

“Standing up to the Chinese government involves definite costs. It is not an easy thing to do. There will be potentially punitive measures taken against you. But if it is a principle that is right in the UK and if it is right in the US, then it should also be right in China. And there will be times when you have to accept costs associated with principles.”
Another signatory, Griffith University anthropologist David Schak, said he believed Cambridge University Press had sullied its centuries-old reputation by bowing to China’s demands. 

“Cambridge seems to be the one who is now censoring rather than China, even though they are doing it at the request of China ... They have soiled their copy book.”
Schak added: “It makes you wonder what they are in the business of doing ... I thought university presses were there to publish good research.”
“They are acceding to China whereas [they should have said]: ‘What you do, we can’t stop you from doing that but we are not going to do that ourselves.’ You put the onus entirely back on the Chinese government rather than cooperating with them.”

Suzanne Pepper, a Hong Kong-based writer whose piece on politics in the former colony was among the blocked China Quarterly articles, said she expected censorship from China’s rulers but not from CUP. 

“It makes them complicit, accomplices in the fine art of censorship, which we are all supposed to deplore,” she said.
Chinese intellectuals also lamented the attempt to limit their access to foreign research. 

“This whole case makes me feel extremely disappointed,” Li Jingrui, a Chinese novelist, wrote on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. 

In an oblique reference to China’s one-party state, she added: “I’m left with the feeling that there is absolutely no escape since every single breath on Earth belongs to the king.”