Persistent Censorship In China Produces Art of Compromise

In 2004, after censorship of health threats had begun to loosen following the SARS epidemic, Yan posed as an AIDS researcher's assistant and returned to Henan to trace what had happened. A local party official let him do the research, he said, but made him pledge not to write about his findings, saying the truth would destroy the economy if it got out.

"At first, I had hoped to do a nonfiction book about the situation in Henan, and then maybe a novel," Yan recalled. "But considering the ban on 'Serve the People' in 2004, I thought it would be hard to get the censors to approve a nonfiction book. So I finally decided to write a novel first."

"The Dream of Ding Village" was finished in August 2005 and published in early 2006. In the fictional world of Ding Village, peasants are encouraged to give so much blood, and the government makes so much money off the sales, that a pipeline is built to ship the blood to market as if it were oil.

The condemnation was clear. But the satire had already been toned down on orders from the publishing house, Yan said, and the fantasy setting was designed to round off the edges. "I didn't worry about it very much," he said. "It was not journalism, right? That's why I wrote it as fiction."

But party censors decided otherwise. They intervened with the publisher after about 100,000 books had been printed, 80,000 of which had been distributed to bookstores. Ren Chun, a spokeswoman for Shanghai Wenyi Publishing Co., wrote a letter to Chinese media that said, "We got orders from the upper level saying the book cannot be published, cannot be sold and cannot be advertised." In the same letter, she said newspapers should abstain from writing about the ban because AIDS is "a very sensitive topic" in China.

Yan said he was never contacted by the censors and has no idea where the ban originated or why. He learned about the censors' intervention only when payments stopped coming from the publishing house, he said. That is standard practice, he noted, because the censors' activities are themselves censored.

For a publisher that wants to stay in business, or an editor who wants to keep his job, this consideration is important. Jia Zongpei, chief editor of Shanghai Wenyi Publishing Co., hung up on a reporter asking what "upper level" told him to stop publishing the book. "I can't tell you anything about it," he said. "Please understand me."

Xu Naiqing, director of book publication at the Shanghai Propaganda Department's press and publishing bureau, said his office did not impose the ban, even though the publishing firm is headquartered in Shanghai. Officials at the General Administration of Press and Publication, part of the party's Central Propaganda Department in Beijing, said they had no idea where the ban came from. They suggested faxing a question; one was faxed, but there was no response.

Yan, by then experienced in book bans, realized he would have to settle for whatever had been earned on copies sold before the ban. But for him, an important point was a contractual provision obliging his publishing firm to give the equivalent of $6,500 to the real-life village behind the story for treatment of its AIDS patients.

The company refused, arguing that it had suffered a large financial loss. Yan, who had pledged to donate an equal amount from his earnings, lodged several entreaties. When they were ignored, he said, he hired a lawyer and filed suit. At the end of a long arbitration, the suit was settled in April with payment of about $50,000 to Yan, based on copies sold before the censor stepped in, but no donation to the village.

Yan himself had assumed that responsibility even before the settlement. He turned over the equivalent of $13,000 to the village in January, just before Chinese New Year, he said, so people there would have enough money for a meal of dumplings, as demanded by tradition.

Despite his experience, Yan said, he thinks the writer's life is improving in China and he has no intention of emigrating. When he got into trouble for his first novel 13 years ago, he recalled, propaganda officials forced him to write self-criticisms for six months.

"But I didn't have to write any for 'The Dream of Ding Village,' and this is progress," he said with a half-smile that betrayed his appreciation of the irony. "I believe that one day in the future, writers will be able to publish anything they write about China."