The lure of the great China market claimed another victim this week as the International Publishers Association (IPA) on Thursday admitted the Publishers Association of China. The irony of a 119-year-old organization founded to promote copyright protection and the freedom to publish bringing an industry group backed by Beijing into the fold was apparently lost on the Geneva-based institution.
Many might say that the Publishers Association of China deserves a seat at the table at a time when the publishing industry in Taiwan and many other countries is declining, since China is the second-largest publishing market in the world.
However, it is worth sparing a minute to remember Yao Wentian (姚文田), the 74-year-old founder of Hong Kong’s Morning Bell Press, since the IPA has apparently forgotten him.
Yao was detained in Shenzhen on Nov. 2, 2013, then formally arrested 10 days later on suspicion of smuggling industrial goods, although his detention was not made public until January last year. During a closed-door trial on May 7 last year, Yao was sentenced to the maximum 10 years in prison.
His family said Yao had been delivering industrial paint to a friend.
However, his real crime in Beijing’s eyes was apparently that he was preparing to publish Chinese Godfather Xi Jinping (習近平) by the US-based Chinese writer Yu Jie (余杰). Yao’s company has a history of publishing works by Chinese dissidents, including Yu’s 2010 work, China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), which was critical of the former Chinese premier, and like many Morning Bell works, has been banned in China.
Many in Hong Kong condemned Yao’s arrest and conviction, as well as the Committee to Protect Journalists, which said that it “threatened to undermine the freedom of all authors and publishers in Hong Kong.”
Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong (程翔) said at the time that Yao’s case would have an adverse effect on the publishing of books on sensitive topics in China. He should know what he is talking about, having spent almost three years in prison in China after being convicted of spying for Taiwan while working as a reporter for Singapore’s Strait Times — which was ludicrous given his strongly pro-China background. Ching was arrested in Shenzen in 2005 after meeting a source who had claimed to have a manuscript belonging to former Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽).
More directly, on Jan. 24 last year, Ola Wallin, chair of the IPA’s Freedom to Publish Committee, issued a call for Beijing to immediately release Yao, saying “if the Chinese government is serious about its new reforms, then it’s time to show this in practice.”
That appeal fell on deaf ears and in the year since Yao was convicted in a sham judicial proceeding, not only has the situation facing Chinese writers worsened, but Xi has led an assault on Chinese civil society on a scale unseen in many years, arresting scores of lawyers, activists and others.
Coinciding with the IPA’s announcement on Thursday, the PEN American Center announced that 12 US publishers have signed a pledge to work against the censorship of foreign authors’ work in China.
Grove/Atlantic president Morgan Entrekin told the New York Times: “This is something we need to stand up to ... we need to set standards for the future so that Chinese publishers can say to whoever is making decisions there that these are the standards that we need to adhere to.”
It is easy to talk about standards from outside China. Only time will tell if the publishing sector has any better luck than the other industries that have flocked to China with an eye on its 1.3 billion potential consumers, only to find themselves running right into the Great Wall of Chinese censorship, trade theft, judicial bias and other malfeasance.
This editorial has been corrected since it was first published to indicate that the Committee to Protect Journalists is not Hong Kong-based.
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