Hong Kong Government Purges Politically Sensitive Books from Libraries

Local media outlets in Hong Kong report that hundreds of books on political topics including the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre are no longer available in the city’s public libraries, after the city’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department ordered librarians to ensure that their collections contained nothing in violation of the National Security Law. This is the latest example of government censorship in Hong Kong that further restricts free speech and attempts to rewrite history.

Helen Davidson from The Guardian described the extent of the book purge:

On Tuesday, Hong Kong media outlets reported the review appeared to have stripped from public shelves hundreds of books about the massacre of student protesters on 4 June 1989. Photon Media searched for 149 titles that were available in 2009 and found only four still listed.

Ming Pao reported that about 40% of politically themed books, magazines and videos available at the end of 2020 were gone, 96 of them removed this year. It said a number of documentaries, including by the public broadcaster RTHK, were also absent.

A Guardian search of the Hong Kong public libraries’ online catalogue returned some titles related to the Tiananmen massacre but most were shown to have “no lending copy available on shelf”. Four books on the “umbrella movement” protests were shown to have copies available. [Source]

After government complaints last week, Ming Pao axed its satirical artist known as Zunzi following his 40-year tenure at the outlet. Later, his books began disappearing from public libraries. RFA found that around 250 books had been culled, three times as many as during a similar action in 2021. Bloomberg reported that a search of the Hong Kong Public Libraries’ catalog on Tuesday yielded no results for terms related to the Tiananmen Massacre. 

At Global Voices, Oiwan Lam provided a partial list of authors that were purged:

Ma Ngok – a political scientist specializing in Hong Kong politics and democratization. He is currently an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

Hui Po Keung – a cultural studies scholar and a trustee of the “612 Humanitarian Relief Fund,” which helped protesters pay for their legal and medical bills after the 2019 pro-democracy protests. He was arrested on charges of foreign collusion under the National Security Law (NSL) and is now out on bail. 

Margaret Ng – a barrister and former member of the legislative council. She is also out on bail under charges of foreign collusion as a trustee of the “612 Humanitarian Relief Fund.”

Allan Au – a veteran journalist and journalism lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was arrested, accused of “conspiracy to publish seditious materials,” and is released now on bail.

Szeto Wah – the founder of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union. The prominent democracy activist passed away in 2011.

Sam Ng – a veteran media worker and a prominent satirical news commentator on the TV news program “Headline News,” which has since been banned.

Tsang Chi-ho – a radio host who also played a major role in “Headline News.”

Justin Wong – is an award-winning artist, political cartoonist, and former assistant professor at Baptist University.

Chin Wan – a prominent writer and localism advocate. 

Simon Shen – a political scientist. [Source]

Defending these changes, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee stated that the books removed from the city’s public libraries were still accessible in private shops. But many Hongkongers, including moderate or establishment ones, expressed concern. “If a government cannot even convince its people why certain books – including those apparently non-political – are banned, it might have difficulties in winning trust on other issues,” warned Simon Chu Fook-keung, a former acting director of the city government’s archives from 1999 to 2003. At the South China Morning Post, Natalie Wong reported that John Lee did not clearly explain the criteria for censoring the books in Hong Kong’s libraries:

Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday defended the removal of more public library books over political sensitivities, saying material circulated had to “serve the interest” of society without breaching the law.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, while insisting such publications were still available in private bookshops, did not address whether the city’s freedom of access to information would be undermined if censorship standards were not transparent, as suggested by critics.

[…] “The principles we use, which I support, are to ensure that there is no breach of any laws in Hong Kong, including, of course, copyrights, etc; and also, if they spread any kinds of messages that are not in the interests of Hong Kong.”

He did not address how certain non-political titles could be linked to national security threats but offered his “strong confidence” in the professionalism of colleagues at the Leisure and Cultural Services Department in ensuring public circulation “served the interest” of the city. [Source]

These book purges come just weeks after Hong Kong held a ceremony for World Book Day, at which Kevin Yeung, the Secretary for Culture, Sports, and Tourism, said that “local public libraries have been nurturing reading as a consistent habit of the public through quality and diversified collections,” according to Xinhua. Earlier in March, Hong Kong police arrested two men for possessing children’s books that were deemed to be “seditious.” This marks the first arrest for merely owning the books, after the publishers were jailed last year.

Along with other government measures that wield the National Security Law against citizens’ rights, these book purges contribute to the erasure of Hong Kong memory. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Louisa Lim described how this parallels the state-induced amnesia in the mainland, but argued that such revisionism will be met with fierce resistance:

Revisionism — with its ancillary altering or obliteration of memory — is an act of repression. It’s the same playbook China used after violently crushing the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing. Then, state-induced amnesia was imposed gradually. At first the government churned out propaganda that labeled those protests as a counterrevolutionary rebellion that had to be suppressed. But over the years, the state slowly excised all public memory of its killings.

In Hong Kong the silence has set in much more quickly. The gagging of dissenting voices and editing of the past has happened at warp speed, mirroring the blink-and-you-miss-it modern news cycle. This has its own logic; the faster the blanket of silence is thrown over Hong Kong, the less time there is for criticism to take root, and the faster the next phase of transformation — whatever that may be — can be introduced. The cycle of unmaking accelerates.

[…] But Hong Kongers don’t easily forget.

When the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen movement could not be publicly commemorated in China, people in Hong Kong took it upon themselves to hold annual vigils for those killed and imprisoned in Beijing and elsewhere. Now it falls to a new Hong Kong diaspora to keep alive the memory of what happened to their own city. [Source]

When you find out that your own Amnesia book has been disappeared from HK public libraries. It should not come as a surprise, given recent moves, and yet it shows how quickly the authorities are moving. https://t.co/L1FyXsNl3I

— Louisa Lim (@limlouisa) May 16, 2023

This ongoing censorship spree in Hong Kong is chilling, if not surprising. Will online publications be affected? In 2019, @asiancha published an entire Issue devoted to Tiananmen and it remains on our front page. This isn't going to change anytime soon. https://t.co/F1JrresCwj pic.twitter.com/YkkakEZJz4

— t (@myetcetera) May 17, 2023

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/05/hong-kong-government-purges-politically-sensitive-books-from-libraries/

Landmark LGBTQ+ Center Closes Amidst State Push For Straight Marriage

The shuttering of the Beijing LGBT Center marks the latest setback for China’s queer community. In a terse statement published to WeChat, the Center offered no explanation for its sudden closure beyond force majeure. Founded in 2008, the Center had been a landmark initiative to provide community space, medical advice, and cultural programming for the capital’s sexual and gender minorities. The Center’s unexplained demise is further evidence of the state’s apparent turn against the LGBTQ+ community, following the censorship of queer media platforms, the disciplining of university students for handing out rainbow flags, state media’s recent use of the phrase “westernized lifestyle” as a euphemism for lesbianism, and a media regulatory body’s insulting criticisms of gender non-conforming men. The fact that the closure was announced on the eve of May 17 International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia made the loss all the more poignant. At The China Project, Zhao Yuanyuan reported on international and domestic reactions to the Center’s closing: 

“The Center was so many things: a hub, a refuge, a flagship, a festival,” Darius Longarino, a research scholar at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai Center, who has worked extensively with experts in China seeking to advance LGBTQ rights, told The China Project. “They provided services to the community like mental health counseling and HIV testing and ran myriad activities like film screenings, exhibitions, English corners, parties, and discussion groups on coming out and intimacy — and so much more.”

[…] “The Center has been under constant scrutiny and surveillance for its work, but because it’s been in operation for a long time and had been actively negotiating with the authorities, it still managed to maintain its major programs. As I know, more and more of its activities were affected and forced to stop recently,” [Stephanie Yingyi Wang, an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies at St. Lawrence University] said. “I can only say that this closure seems inevitable in the long run, but I still admire how long the Center has stood up against immense pressure and remained to be the beacon for many.”

[…] On Weibo, the news of its sudden shutdown has triggered an outpouring of sadness and reminiscences about its importance to the community. “Ten years ago when I just graduated from school, I achieved self-acceptance here. Thank you and I hope future generations of sexual and gender minorities can still find their organization,” a longtime fan wrote on the Center’s Weibo page. “We don’t say goodbye. We say ‘see you down the road,’” a Weibo user who used to volunteer at the Center commented. [Source]

Darius Longarino, the Yale Law School research scholar quoted above, posted a thread to Twitter expanding on the Center’s importance: 

The Beijing LGBT Center announced its closure today. Founded in 2008, the Center was a vibrant community space & a groundbreaking advocacy organization. Their team spearheaded pioneering research, and built networks of LGBTQ-affirming health & business professionals. 1/5 pic.twitter.com/mfZlpLrKSD

— Darius Longarino 龙大瑞 (@DariusLongarino) May 15, 2023

The Center also focused on developing LGBTQ-affirming health professionals so LGBT ppl could find appropriate care (rather than, for eg, encounter a therapist who would push them to pursue conversion therapy). English-language state media often highlighted the Center's work. 3/5 pic.twitter.com/S4u1SMMaGe

— Darius Longarino 龙大瑞 (@DariusLongarino) May 15, 2023

are struggling to survive. How long they can hold on for (or, rather, be allowed to hold on for) is unclear. For more on the closing of space for LGBTQ expression and advocacy please see: https://t.co/qiG0i2lMBi 5/5

— Darius Longarino 龙大瑞 (@DariusLongarino) May 15, 2023

The exact reason for the Center’s closure remains unclear. A former volunteer told Bloomberg that it was the result of a long-term pressure campaign from a number of actors, including the Center’s neighbors. The Center is but one of many LGBTQ+ organizations to be forced to shut down. In at least one case, the Chinese government has detained LGBTQ+ leaders and forced them to close their groups as a precondition of release. Huizong Wu at the Associated Press:

“They are not the first group, nor are they the largest, but because Beijing LGBT Center was in Beijing, it represented China’s LGBT movement,” said one Chinese activist who requested anonymity out of fear for his safety. “In our political, economic and cultural center, to have this type of organization. It was a symbol of the LGBT movement’s presence.”

[…] The well-known group called LGBT Rights Advocacy China, which brought strategic lawsuits to push for policy change and expanding rights, closed down in 2021. The group’s founder was detained and the organization’s end was a condition of his release, according to an activist close to the group who was previously based in China but has since relocated abroad. He declined to be named out of fear of government retribution toward family in China.

[…] “Their shutdown makes one feel very helpless. As groups large and small shut down or stop hosting events, there’s no longer a place where one can see hope,” said another Chinese activist who requested anonymity for fear of government retribution. [Source]

It just feels so utterly hopeless. I know that queers & feminists in China know how to work a loophole, a cat door, a hairline fracture, a whisper, a metaphor, but soon that's too subtle and quiet to reach the people who need it. A secret handshake can't replace a lighthouse.

— Jinghua Qian (@qianjinghua) May 15, 2023

On the same day the Center was shut down, Taiwan’s legislature passed an amendment allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. The stark contrast fueled debate on Weibo: “Now we can only wish Taiwan will be free forever,” one user wrote. Some conservative mainland commentators hailed the Center’s closure as a victory over Western influence.

While cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights, the state has pushed a heteronormative natalist policy it hopes can stave off negative economic consequences from its falling population. India has overtaken China in total population, marking the first time since the U.N. began tracking the statistic in 1950 that China has not been the world’s most populous country. The government hopes to boost births after decades of mandating that most couples only have one child, an initiative that has been met with skepticism. In May, the nominally independent China Family Planning Association announced a “pilot project” across 20 cities to create a “New Era Marriage and Childbearing Culture,” in an effort to encourage couples to have more children. From state media outlet Global Times: 

The projects will focus on tasks including promoting marrying and having children at appropriate ages, encouraging parents to share child-rearing responsibilities, and curbing high “bride prices” and other outdated customs, said association officials during an event held in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province on Thursday. The cities include Guangzhou and Handan in North China’s Hebei Province. 

[…] “The society needs to guide young people more on the concept of marriage and childbirth, and encourage young people to get married and have children,” [independent demographer He Yafu] said.

Indeed, efforts to improve society’s marriage culture and environment will hedge against the possible negative effects of some of the demographic downturn, analysts noted. [Source]

Most of the state’s efforts to increase marriage and childbearing target women and put the onus of population decline on them. A small town in southeast China had unmarried women sign a pledge to reject high “bride prices,” a traditional cash gift to a potential wife’s family as a precondition for engagement. The government blames exorbitant bride prices, which can reach $50,000, for low marriage rates in rural areas. Other local governments have come up with similarly eccentric schemes to increase birth and marriage rates. In Hebei, officials had a dance troupe bang pots and drums while chanting such slogans as “Giving birth is an important part of life!” One rural county in Hunan province came up with “Operation Bed Warming,” an initiative that pressured local women to marry local men, rather than looking for potential partners in distant urban areas. Jilin has begun allowing single women access to in vitro fertilization, a policy that members of a national political advisory body have recommended be expanded nationwide. In January, Sichuan began allowing unmarried couples to legally add their children to their household registration. A number of private Chinese companies have begun offering women subsidies to freeze their eggs, thus allowing them to delay pregnancy until they so choose. 

For many Chinese women, these policies do not address their fundamental concerns about childbirth, namely that traditional social mores will bind them to the home and preclude them from pursuing personal and professional opportunities. One woman told Al Jazeera: “I don’t want my life to only be about taking care of kids, doing housework and taking care of my husband’s parents when they get old, but I feel like many families expect that from a married woman in China.” The government’s campaign to push marriage and childrearing has instead birthed a highly sardonic self-appellation among Chinese women: “huminerals,” a term for people destined to be relentlessly exploited until they’re tossed onto the slag heap of history. 

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/05/landmark-lgbtq-center-closes-amidst-state-push-for-straight-marriage/

Photo: Old Guangzhou City Wall, by Wayne Hsieh

Old Guangzhou City Wall, by Wayne Hsieh (CC BY-NC 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/05/photo-old-guangzhou-city-wall-by-wayne-hsieh/

CDT REPORT: Cloud Cover—Police Geographic Information System Procurement Across China, 2005-2022

The full report can be read in PDF form here. Below is a brief introduction.

A CDT investigation details the efforts of police and other departments across China to utilize geographic information systems (GIS) to enhance and coordinate surveillance capacity. Hundreds of government procurement records obtained and analyzed by CDT show that Chinese governments at various levels are building an expansive and sophisticated network of police geographic information systems (PGIS) with the intention of predicting and suppressing social unrest. Here are some of the main findings:

• From September 2005 to January 2022, governments across 30 provinces signed at least 803 PGIS contracts worth 6.2 billion RMB.
• In most provinces and many cities, PGIS procurement increased during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, average PGIS spending increased by almost 60 percent year-on-year, and the number of contracts reached an all-time high.
• Certain PGIS contracts solicited “smart” technologies and American technologies inaccessible to Chinese citizens. Others were signed with Chinese companies that previously had extensive access to the U.S. capital market.
• Some contracts coincided with other government purchases of surveillance systems specifically designed to target Uyghurs. There are also notable concentrations of procurement in regions with significant Uyghur or other minority populations.

GIS technology displays, stores, and analyzes geospatial data for purposes such as disease tracking or environmental monitoring. In the hands of law enforcement agencies, GIS can be used to coordinate police resources or to plot and visualize locations of unlawful activities, detect crime patterns, and create strategies for identifying suspects and deploying officers. 

Chinese PGIS purchases made in recent years have focused on predictive policing, with the goal of improving the state’s ability to maintain “social stability.” Some of these PGIS contracts explicitly target petitioners and other “key persons” who are in practice defined as anyone deemed ideologically threatening to the state.

Our report provides an overview of the contents and geographic distribution of these PGIS contracts across Chinese provinces and cities, as well as their evolution over time. It also highlights numerous cities with high levels of total spending, spending on individual contracts, and spending per capita. 

The PGIS contracts in our dataset appeared concentrated over one, if not two, major waves of procurement that span between 2017 and 2021. PGIS procurement appeared to spike at the same time that China’s annual GDP growth rate decreased to its lowest level since 1976. This is revealing of the Chinese state’s priorities.

Part of our report analyzes the change in PGIS procurement during the pandemic. The majority of PGIS contracts in our dataset were made by Public Security Bureaus, which were also responsible for enforcing pandemic control policies. The recent adoption of big data bureaus and cloud governance facilitated these enforcement efforts, and in some cases PGIS products were explicitly marketed to support such efforts. Media reports also documented an increase in police surveillance during the pandemic.

Our data indicates that not only was there a substantial amount of PGIS procurement concentrated during the pandemic, but it also appeared by various measurements to have increased during the pandemic across a significant number of provinces and cities. Some areas displayed an enormous increase. For example, Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi spent four times as much on PGIS contracts during the pandemic than in all prior years. Beijing spent over 50 percent of its visible PGIS budget during the pandemic, which amounted to double the pandemic spending of Shanghai. The graph below shows the distribution of PGIS procurement across each province.

Total PGIS procurement in some areas is not fully accounted for in our dataset due to the deletion of certain contracts from the government database, among other factors, but the statistics in our report provide a window into the general scope and evolution of government PGIS spending. An interactive portal containing our dataset will soon be made available on this page. More details on all of this are included in the full report.

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/05/cdt-report-cloud-cover-police-geographic-information-system-procurement-across-china-2005-2022/

Photo: Untitled (Forest Park Shanghai, China), by sung ming whang

Untitled (Forest Park Shanghai, China), by sung ming whang (CC BY 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/05/photo-untitled-forest-park-shanghai-china-by-sung-ming-whang/

Translation: Censored Lyrics and Reactions to Guangdong Rapper Vyan’s “Land of Hope”

On March 25th, Guangdong-based rapper Liu Wanli, better known as Vyan (pronounced “vee-yen”) was invited to appear on “One Seat,” a lecture program that has been called “China’s TED Talks.” In his appearance, he performed an original rap song titled “Land of Hope,” which made reference to a number of current events and societal issues, including the case of Xiaohuamei, a trafficked woman and mother of eight who was kept chained in a shed in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province. Vyan’s performance attracted a great deal of attention online, with many netizens praising his frank—yet still hopeful—treatment of society’s ills. 

The song, which has not yet been fully censored, was included with Vyan’s other works on the NetEase Cloud Music (网易云音乐网) platform, but some of the key lyrics to the song, including the reference to “Xiaohuamei,” were muted. According to Vyan, law enforcement officers from the Guangdong Public Security and other government departments have repeatedly asked him to take related works offline.

The performance video and lyrics, translated by CDT, can be found below, along with a selection of netizen messages left in the song’s NetEase Cloud Music comment section.

“Land of Hope,” by Vyan:

I hope the young can live with dignity, not just scraping by in basement rooms
I hope the ballads don’t just sing of lost love but also speak the truth
I hope the hashtags aren’t just gossip, and that books and art aren’t banned
I hope we keep an eye on the powers that be—we won’t forget, or lose our memories

I hope people worship knowledge and ideas, not bling and superficiality
I hope we won’t have to worry about kidnapping, or hear the wails of families ripped apart
I hope women aren’t kept in chains, and don’t turn into Xiaohuamei
Our shining idols shouldn’t be rapists, and poor kids should have the chance to blossom, instead of dying young

I hope parents in the countryside can stay with their kids, and not just leave them with grandparents
I hope that patients’ wounds won’t fester because they can’t afford to bribe the docs
I hope no one’s treated like a criminal because of race or class
I hope for peace on both sides of the Strait—we don’t need missiles on standby

I hope the flashy entertainments on our HD screens don’t mask the hopeless cries
I hope homes bring people joy, not turn them into slaves
I hope people can learn to think, speak, and respect, instead of sticking to their “-isms”
I hope everyone in this ancient land can hold their heads up high

Someday you won’t need a filter, and your smile will be just as sweet
Someday the future won’t be so dim, and we’ll see everything clear
This isn’t a dream—when we all have dreams,
When all this is not a dream, this land will be free from pain

Hope is the mushroom cloud and the satellite rising from the Gobi Desert
Hope is the youth racing through snow to take the ‘77 college entrance exam
Hope is the Red Guard who sheds his armband and never wears it again
Hope isn’t someone’s charity, it lives in the heart of every peon

So I hope you hold on to hope—only hope can roil these dead waters
I hope you have hope—it’s a force that drives away the gray fog
Hope is more than hope—it’s a beacon when you veer off course
Hope is no longer hope when all across this country, hope is set free [Chinese]

Netizen comments, compiled by CDT Chinese editors, from the NetEase Cloud Music comment section:

sitianfly: I can’t figure out why anyone would think that this sentence should be muted: “I hope women aren’t kept in chains, and don’t turn into Xiaohuamei.” I hope I can listen to the full song and watch the full video. I hope everyone will stop self-censoring when they express their opinions. I hope we can still hope.

一切成熟皆与苦难有关: They muted the part about Xiaohuamei?? Ugh.

傻13恐惧症: “I hope the flashy entertainments on our HD screens don’t mask the hopeless cries”

ID-824: “I hope the hashtags aren’t just gossip, and that books and art aren’t banned”

JiwaiHo: You know some voices will always be powerful.

哈吼嘿呀: Can a country where a song [like this] can be castrated really be a “Land of Hope”?

BerzerkJC: “I hope you have hope—it’s a force that drives away the gray fog!”

丸丸不喜欢上学: When hope is no longer just hope—I look forward to the day that happens.

梁澤楷Gai: Some things they can never steal away, some things are untouchable.

GrantYip: I think this song should be heard by more people. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I don’t believe the world’s gone deaf.

littlewhite兔: I hope this is a Land of Hope. [Chinese]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/05/translation-censored-lyrics-to-guangdong-rapper-vyans-land-of-hope/

Photo: Colorful Chinese Lanterns, by QuantFoto

Colorful Chinese Lanterns, by QuantFoto (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2023/05/photo-colorful-chinese-lanterns-by-quantfoto/