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A few weeks ago we learned that Taylor & Francis became the latest academic publisher to have its catalogue censored in China. A thread with a few thoughts and context.
This has been happening more frequently (or visibly) since 2017. SpringerNature acquiesced to Chinese government censorship demands seemingly without putting up much of a fight. nytimes.com/2017/11/01/wor…
In fact, it seems that Springer removed particular articles from their catalogue at the request of Chinese authorities, arguing that it was better for 99% of the catalogue to be available in China than nothing at all. thebookseller.com/news/springer-…
This argument ignores the fact that manicured censorship is extremely insidious, as @gregdistelhorst & @jessicacweiss & @JimMillward have pointed out in various places. It allows readers to think that the censored version represents the full scope of foreign scholarship on China.
Cambridge University Press initially seemed willing to do the same by removing 300 articles that the CCP found threatening from its journal The China Quarterly ft.com/content/3f0476…
However, after outcry from the academic community and coverage by journalists like @benjaminbland and others, CUP reversed its decision ft.com/content/3f0476…
The story about censorship was, of course, censored in China itself. theguardian.com/world/2017/aug…
A few months ago the @AsianStudiesRev announced that its publisher, T&F, confirmed that the journal would be blocked in China going forward asaa.asn.au/about/advocacy…
Asian Studies Review was not alone: more than 80 T&F journals were blocked reuters.com/article/us-chi…
A statement was released through @tandfnewsroom confirming that 83 journals were censored going forward newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/taylor-francis…
Well, actually in some places it tried to frame the censorship as just a purchasing decision by a customer. But this is inaccurate: the customers are the libraries or universities. The import agency is restricting the menu of offerings available to the customer; i.e. censorship.
After tweeting about these issues, I got an offer to speak on the phone with someone at T&F about my concerns. This was a nice gesture, but in retrospect, it was just designed to placate and after following up it is clear that T&F was going to do what it was going to do anyway.
Given its apparent monetary stake in China, I'm not surprised that it would seemingly sacrifice some pesky social science & area studies journals
However, @tandfnewsroom should tell us what 83 journals are censored. They publish some excellent journals. Is Democratization censored in China? International Feminist Journal of Politics? Pacific Review? Contemporary Politics? Third World Quarterly? The list goes on.
T&F will argue that it doesn't divulge information about transactions with customers. But again, the Chinese authorities here are not the customer, they are regulators. It's the least that T&F owes the academics who do all the reviewing, editing, and writing for their product.
Again, this is part of a broader trend. @ElizRedden summarized it well here: insidehighered.com/quicktakes/201…
And the Little Red Podcast w/ @limlouisa & @GraemeKSmith discussed even more insidious efforts by Chinese authorities to censor academic work, such as targeted censorship of digital archives soundcloud.com/user-340830825…
For now, this is only happening in China. That's concerning enough. But what happens if Chinese authorities ask publishers to censor their catalogues outside of China or else lose their access to the Chinese market? Will they comply? It's far-fetched, maybe. Or maybe not.
