The whole world is now following the news coming from China. Especially book lovers are now trying to focus on what is going on there. The whole point is that Chinese authorities have made the decision to ban the books of eight famous authors. Pretty typical for China. If you’re a writer and your works conflict with the government of your country, be ready to settle in a black list.
First of all, a famous think-tank founder Guo Yushan, who is known in the West for providing help to the blind activist Chen Guangcheng to escape the house arrest some years ago, has been detained on charges of “causing a disturbance”. And while Guangcheng hadn’t said a word about all the protests, news of his arrest pops up as several authors face with the censorship bans after supporting the protests.
So, who happens to be on the blacklist? First of all, Giddens Ko, who is a famous Taiwanese film director and writer, Yu Ying-shih (Chinese – American historian) and Leung Man-tao, a well-known host from Hong Kong TV. Things like that cannot just be passing by the global society. And my personal viewpoint is that if all these authors define themselves as modern reformers, they must take responsibility for maintaining mainstream politics, not jeopardizing the solidarity of the country. In case these people decide to oppose the political ides, they should be 100% ready to get a punch-in-the-face reaction from the society!
On the other hand, if the publishing authorities exert every effort in order to ban certain authors and their books… what are they trying to prove or do? The whole point is that such bans will most likely make people in China suspicious. How can a government that does not have enough faith in people govern well? These books are and always will be an essential part of the country’s reality, which means one cannot just erase it with a couple of bans. That’s pretty naïve. All social media users will always be willing to find the copy of the book written by the banned authors and they will most likely succeed in it. It is not a secret that have a book forbidden in China is usually a marketing coup for a great number of publishers selling multiple copies abroad. Thus, while the government representatives in China exert every effort in order to ban the publication and sale of books by some of the authors mentioned above, the social media users make sure to not waste even a minute! They do their best to find the copy of the “unwanted” authors whose works may soon become precious items of private collections. The majority of them truly believe that the books that are banned nowadays will become a crucial resource for cultural studies in the nearest future. Who knows, maybe they’ve got the point.