How China's Censorship Affects What You Read

There was some discussion at and around the Frankfurt book fair not long ago about China's censorship policies. If you think this is only about freedom of thought and expression for the people of China, think again. The Chinese policies may well have a direct impact on what we read in the United States.

Although most American black-and-white books (including most novels and narrative nonfiction, as well as some illustrated titles) are manufactured domestically, most full-color books from large publishers are printed in China (as are some one-color titles). Color printing is vastly cheaper in China than it is in the U.S. (The alternative is printing domestically but raising the cover price significantly in order to make the book profitable.) But Chinese printers (even those owned by U.S. companies) cannot print anything that the Chinese government finds objectionable. The list of what is forbidden is long and convoluted; some major items on it include anything to do with Taiwan or Tibet (including maps that depict those places as something other than "China"); mention of the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square protests, or anything alluding to Chinese censorship; nudity and other sexual content; and more.

American publishers don't want to be censored, but when the Chinese manufacturer balks at content for a book, a decision must be made. Keeping the content that China won't print means finding somewhere else to print the book. Depending on the nature of the content at issue, another manufacturer in that part of the world, e.g., Singapore, might take it on at comparable cost (although not always; China has volume). Or perhaps not. Then the question is whether the content is so important to the book that the publisher is willing to pay the cost of printing it in the United States--and will that additional cost shift the balance on this book from profitable to unprofitable?