Chinese intellectuals and bloggers have celebrated Cambridge University’s decision to push back against Beijing’s draconian information controls – but Communist party censors reacted almost immediately to prevent word of the snub spreading in mainland China.
Cambridge University Press, the world’s oldest publishing house, had faced a ferocious public backlash following its admission last week that it had complied with a Chinese order to block access to more than 300 politically sensitive articles published in its journal the China Quarterly.
Amid intensifying criticism and calls for an academic boycott, Cambridge University – which owns the publishing house, the world’s oldest – announced on Monday it had reversed the decision, which it said been taken “reluctantly” as a result of a “clear order” from China.
The blocked articles, which covered thorny topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the Cultural Revolution, were made accessible to readers in mainland China free of charge.
Cambridge University also announced its rejection of China’s censorship demands in a Chinese-language post on its official account on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. “Academic freedom is the overriding principle on which the University of Cambridge is based,” it said.
Cambridge’s change of heart drew praise from Chinese intellectuals. “It is a triumph of morality,” said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian. “[The decision] should be welcomed, if Cambridge sticks to it.”
Sun Peidong, a Fudan University historian, credited the international academic outcry for Cambridge’s volte-face. “Western intellectuals … collectively made it reversible,” she wrote on Weibo.
Chinese internet users also praised Cambridge’s support for academic freedom, with its Weibo post drawing more than 2,600 shares and 525 overwhelmingly approving comments. “Cambridge University has backbone – academic freedom cannot be threatened by political persecution,” wrote one. Another commented: “What a brilliant decision! Well done Cambridge!”
However, less than 12 hours after the Weibo statement was posted – at about 12.20am local time in China – it had disappeared, apparently scrubbed from the Chinese internet by censors. Those trying to access the post instead found the message: “Sorry, this article has been deleted.”
Qiao Mu, a former Beijing Foreign Studies University professor who was forced out of the university as a result of his outspokenness on political topics, said such censorship was part of everyday life in one-party China: “Censors treat everyone equally under an authoritarian system such as this.”
A question about the censorship row was also expunged from a transcript of a daily foreign ministry press briefing on Monday. According to the Wall Street Journal, ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying declined to comment, claiming the controversy was not a diplomatic issue. But neither the question nor Hua’s answer found its way into the official record, which is routinely shorn of topics considered inconvenient by Chinese authorities.
Last month, after similar questions about dying Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo were also removed from the ministry’s transcript, a spokesperson told foreign journalists: “If you can decide how to write [your reports], then I think as the ministry of foreign affairs, we can decide what goes online or not.”
Speaking on Monday, Tim Pringle, China Quarterly’s editor, said he was delighted by Cambridge’s reversal. “Any publishing house of CUP’s renown has no business taking down articles” at the behest of authorities from any country, he said.
However, Pringle said the dispute could and should have been avoided. “If CUP had fully consulted us we could have flagged up that we would not have supported the decision to remove these articles and would have been in a position to warn them of the significant damage to their reputation [that it would cause].”
Writing on the China File website, Columbia University scholar Andrew Nathan, who was among those whose work was blocked, said “irreversible damage” had been done to Cambridge’s reputation. “Who in future can submit an article to any Cambridge journal, or submit a book manuscript to the press, with confidence that the publisher will always preserve the integrity of the work?”
Christopher Balding, an economics professor who authored a petition demanding a CUP reversal, said Cambridge’s decision to rebuff Beijing’s censorship demands would be “very embarrassing” for the Chinese government. “China absolutely craves respect and affirmation of what it has achieved.
“But [the decision] definitely does not mean that the problem of censorship has gone away at all. There are going to be these ongoing battles about this issue for the foreseeable future with regards to China.”
Additional reporting by Wang Zhen