On October 13, 2014, the state sponsored Global Times published an editorial entitled “
View Publishing Ban Within Context” (the Chinese version was entitled “Its Exagerrating to Call Publication Administration as ‘Book Burning and Burying Scholars’” (
“焚书坑儒”是出版管理的夸张帽子)). Some excerpts:
Several verified Weibo accounts exposed claims during the weekend that the media regulator has released an internal notice demanding books authored by Yu Yingshi and Jiubadao (penname of Ke Jingteng) to be taken off the shelves. In addition, material by Ye Fu (penname of Zheng Shiping), Mao Yushi, Zhang Qianfan, Liang Wendao and Xu Zhiyuan will not be published. The incident was compared to "burning books and burying Confucian scholars alive" during the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206BC).
. . . .
The future prospect for publication of books by people on the list is grim. The prediction is based on the fact that some on the list are foreign nationals but active in Chinese politics, including openly supporting Hong Kong's Occupy Central movement or "Taiwan independence." Some are Chinese mainland scholars but are opposed to the country's political system. If these people are subject to some limit from authority, the signal is not unusual to Chinese society.
. . . .
If one has positioned himself at odds to the country's mainstream political path, he shouldn't expect his influence to keep on rising without disruption.
If these advocators of political dissident culture define themselves as reformers, they should take responsibility for maintaining mainstream politics, not jeopardizing the country's solidarity. If they insist on prioritizing opposing political ideas, they must prepare for pushback from society, which will be unpleasant in most cases.
These screenshots show that, within hours of the publication of the Global Times editorial, works by the scholar Yu Yingshi (余英时), including “Modern Crises and Ideological Characters” (现代危机与思想人物) and “Reviews and Prospects of Modern Confucianism” (现代儒学的回顾与展望), began disappearing from online book sellers like DangDang and Amazon.cn.
