Censoring the Intellectual Public Space in China

What Topics Are Not Allowed and Who Gets Blacklisted

Bibliographic Data

ID6317166
AuthorsXiaojun Yan (0000-0001-9783-6522, University of Hong Kong, corresponding author), La Li (0000-0001-6810-8294, University of Hong Kong)
Year2024
Volume22
Issue3
Pages753-770
Publication date2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePerspectives on Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1537-5927 • E-ISSN: 1541-0986
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1537592723002815
OpenAlexW4388880029
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited62

Censorship is one of the main forms of political coercion deployed by modern states to control and regulate public expression. In this article, we examine the political censorship of China’s intellectual public space, which has long been underexplored. We apply unsupervised machine learning to examine the database of a leading intellectual portal website, which serves as an archive of both published and censored intellectual writings between 2000 and 2020 and includes over 740 million Chinese characters. We identify a strategic censorship mechanism that consists of thematic and persona censorship elements. Thematic censorship involves the state filtering out writing that competes with the official policy narrative, historiography, and values. Persona censorship involves the complete muting of individual intellectuals who have previously made derogatory attacks on the supreme leaders of the Communist Party, which represents a symbolic act of open defiance

Censoring (clinical trials · Censorship · Communism · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public space · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Computational and Text Analysis Methods · Law

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