Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – In today’s globalized and economically thriving China, book censorship is applied just like in the era of Mao, contrasting the words of political leaders. This is what authors, intellectuals and experts say, pointing to a recent “unexplained” ban on eight books.

No official explanation has been given for the censorship of eight books that are personal or romanticized memoirs of the Maoist period in China, of the purges of intellectuals, of the Great Leap Forward and of the Cultural Revolution: issues that the Communist Party believes are “very delicate” and which it blocks any research about. During an in-house meeting on 11 January, General Administration of Press and Publications (Gapp) deputy director Wu Shulin merely said that these books had “overstepped the line” and threatened severe punishments for the publishers. Some publishing houses received orders not to publish or to distribute incriminating books.

One of the books is the memoirs of Yuan Ying (The Other Stories of History: My Days at the Supplement Division of the People's Daily). Yang is a veteran member of the Party and ex-director of the government paper People’s Daily. He was sacked for “revealing State secrets”. He heard about the ban only indirectly and asked for an explanation from the Gapp directors without getting any answers. However on 31 January he received a visit from Wu. Yuan said Wu admitted the book did not reveal any “state secret” but tackled arguments (like the Cultural Revolution, the anti-right movement, anecdotes on party and state officials) considered “very delicate matters that need careful examination”. Wu said: “The central government has issued several documents in recent years to regulate with precision the administration of publications and these rules must be rigidly applied.”

Liu Suli, a leading book distributor in Beijing, said he saw this as a confirmation that those responsible for censorship “are trying by all means to block debate on the ban and other social matters before the meetings of the National People’s Congress and of the People's Political Consultative Conference” in March and the 17th Congress of the Communist Party slated for autumn.

The censored writers did not even receive an “informal” explanation. The censored Past Stories of Peking Opera Stars was written by Zhang Yihe, daughter of ex-Transport Minister Zhang Bojun, who was targeted in the purge of the “anti-right movement” in 1957. Zhang asked Gapp and Wu himself for the reason for the ban many times but in vain. Zhang says censorship requires “a formal notice” to the author and cannot consist merely “of the statement of an official in an anonymous warning by the monitoring body to the subject, or in a written communication to a journal or publishing house.” During the Cultural Revolution, Zhang spent a decade in prison, from 1968, just because she was the daughter of Zhang Bojun, and now many friends are warning her she risks returning to jail. She says “the warnings of my friends make me sad… I used to believe the situation in China was better than when I was arrested… But their concern shows that, in the long term, the repression of intellectuals has deformed their minds and that people are still blocked by fear.”

Fu Guoyong, a renowned intellectual from Zhejiang, says that in the era of Mao, it was enough to criticize the authorities to have a book or an author banned. But now this “under the table” censorship is not legal and the decisions of “officials should be given maximum transparency”.

Analysts recall that President Hu Jintao has reiterated that his aim is to create a “harmonious society”, understood to be a more just society without inconsistencies. In November, the Premier Wen Jiabao, speaking to artists and writers, said freedom of expression was guaranteed by law.

Some days ago, Yan Xiaohong, administrative deputy director for press and publications, denied the effective ban on eight books but admitted “investigations” had been carried out because some “contained pornographic content, some could cause religious and ethnic minority problems and some have touched on national security and state secrets.”