The New Censorship, the New Academic Freedom

Commercial Publishers and the Chinese Market

Abstract

Since 2017 the international Chinese Studies community has been shocked to discover that many of the major commercial academic publishers have been actively working with the Chinese censors to limit access to ‘politically sensitive’ books and articles within the country in order to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market. This essay examines these incidents and the responses of the publishers upon being discovered—arguing that the convergence of China’s increasingly assertive information control regime and the commercial academic publishers’ thirst for ever more profits has resulted in a new form of institutionalised commercial censorship.

自2017年以來，國際漢學界震驚地發現，許多主流商業學術出版社為了維持自身在利潤豐厚的中國市場的地位，積極與中國審查機構合作，限制中國國內學者和學生對"政治敏感"書籍和文章的獲取。本文剖析此類事件以及出版社在問題曝光之後的回應，進而論證在中國日益嚴格的信息管控與商業出版社對利潤最大化訴求的結合下，一種商業審查制度化的形成。