Accept Censor Rules News Today

A couple of weeks ago, I received a request from a New York Times reporter to talk about publishing in China. The topic has been in the news lately, with the BookExpo in New York, where Chinese publishers were the guests of honor. In May, the PEN American Center released “Censorship and Conscience: Foreign Authors and the Challenge of Chinese Censorship,” an excellent and

This piece was first published in the May 7, 2015 issue of One night in September, three hundred people crowded into the basement auditorium of an office tower in Beijing to hear a discussion between two of China’s most popular writers. One was Liu Yu, a thirty-eight-year-old political scientist and blogger who has written a best seller explaining how American democracy works. Her fans call her “goddess”—for her writings and her stylish looks. But this evening, Liu was just a foil for ...