One Chinese printer rejected a history text saying the ancestors of Māori came from Taiwan; another insisted that 19th Century NZ dressmakers imported their silk from the People's Republic of China.
Mounting concern about a new Chinese censorship regime is provoking some Kiwi publishing houses to move valuable printing contracts to Singapore, Malaysia – or back home to New Zealand.
Printing companies like Wellington-headquartered Bluestar are welcoming the additional work, though they are struggling to ship in enough paper to meet the demands of book publishers. Auckland University Press, Massey University Press, Te Herenga Waka University Press and Te Papa Press are among the companies that say they are printing fewer books in China.
Bluestar group general manager Darren Comrie acknowledges printing in China can be cheaper, but says there are added freight costs. "The supply chains are challenging for everyone," he says. "But obviously we can turn it around quicker. Our quality would be better. Here, you can actually come and see it on a press and it's easier to monitor your job. And we're keeping New Zealanders employed."
Moving their printing contracts back to New Zealand tends to be an expensive commitment; China has made a name for high-quality, affordable colour printing and many publishers preferred to get their most elegant coffee table books, cookbooks and children's books printed there.
Printing was invented in China during the Tang Dynasty, of course, more than 600 years before the Europeans came to the party with the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. And in the 1960s, Chinese printers reputedly produced more than a billion copies of Mao Zedong's manifesto, known as the Little Red Book, making it the most-widely printed book in the world after The Bible.
But while the quality of Chinese printing remains high, the shadow of the censors is falling on more and more books.
Censorship in China has been intensifying under President Xi Jinping, and when schools reopened after the nation's Covid-19 lockdowns, they were ordered to embark on a national drive to remove books deemed politically incorrect. In Hong Kong, government employees removed books by pro-democracy activists from public libraries to see whether they violated a new national security law.
One rural middle-school teacher told Reuters their school had removed traditional comic-like picture books called lianhuanhua, books about Christianity, books about Buddhism and, notably, copies of Animal Farm and 1984 – George Orwell’s classic novels about authoritarianism which have been available in China for decades. “This is the first movement targeted at libraries since the Cultural Revolution,” said Beijing-based analyst Wu Qiang.
For years, publishers have known any references to Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, Falun Gong, Tibet or the Dalai Lama were likely to be rejected. Chinese authorities have worked especially robustly to ensure any maps depict Chinese national and regional boundaries as the People's Republic of China would like them to be, rather than the boundaries that other nations and international fora may recognise.
But now responsibility for censoring printed matter has been shifted to a new government agency, and New Zealand publishers have been told the scrutiny is more rigorous than ever before. The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, which previously censored books, was reportedly subsumed into the radio and TV agency in 2018.
The renamed and rebranded National Press and Publication Administration now handles books censorship – the "Central Propaganda Department" no longer exists under that official English language moniker, though its Chinese name still translates as such.
Among its edicts, it prohibits works that “endanger social morality or national cultural traditions” or that “promote cults and feudal superstitions”. And that is applied to overseas publications that are printed in China, even if they aren't marketed and distributed to the Chinese people.
"There may be pressure on our universities to stop doing their printing in China, as it has a reputational risk." – Prof Anne-Marie Brady, University of Canterbury
For New Zealand publishers, that has meant tough decisions when they're told by printers, or the censors, that certain people or places can't be named. Professor Anne-Marie Brady, from the University of Canterbury, has critiqued of the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to censor and constrain free speech.
She says most publishers just won’t print potentially-sensitive books there, though there had been occasions where "the red line wasn’t obvious to publishers and they’d have a problem".
There has been an international conversation about how it is unacceptable for university publishers to agree to Chinese Communist Party censorship so as to get cheaper printing, she says.
"There are people that are doing things that you find repugnant, but you don't want to start punishing people that you don't think are responsible for those decisions. It's easier to march against apartheid ... It's a bit harder to say to a printer in the Shenzhen, we're not gonna do business with you because we don't like what your Government's doing to a particular ethnic group. It's muddy as hell." – Kevin Chapman, Upstart Press
"And since governments like New Zealand and the UK are addressing issues to do with Party foreign interference at universities, including on academic freedom, there may be pressure on our universities to stop doing their printing in China, as it has a reputational risk.
"And also, governments are keen for universities to reduce their dependence on China for funding and other aspects."
She said the General Administration of Press and Publications was absorbed first of all with Radio Film and Television in one unit, then merged under the supervision of the Central Propaganda Department. "The People's Republic of China is a Party-State system. However in the last couple of years quite a few state organisation got completely merged within Party bodies, in order to better control the sector."
Govt executes tougher censorship
The latest Publishers Association market size report shows that 2526 New Zealand books were published in 2020, earning publishers more than $300m revenue – though just $52.6m was domestic revenue from New Zealand content. Print formats represented the bulk of publisher revenue at $167.2m, and most of those books were sold through old-fashion main street bookstores.
Certainly in New Zealand, it is the university presses that speak out most strongly against Chinese clampdowns on what they can publish, and it is they who say they are gradually reducing their reliance on Chinese printing factories.
Sam Elworthy, publisher of Auckland University Press, tells of a Māori history titled Te Kōparapara, that talked about Polynesian people who came from and through Taiwan. "They wanted us to change the name to 'Taiwan, a province of the People's Republic of China'. Even though this was millennia before the People's Republic of China was even thought of."
So he took the printing job to another country – and he says New Zealand publishers are doing that more and more often.
"Printers tend to be looking at things and just saying, is this going to be tricky, is there going to be a long process to get through the censors on this book? – Sam Elworthy, Auckland University Press
"I think it has got a bit worse," he says. "There was a big edict that came out that our printers circulated over here, two or three years ago, that was quite detailed about the about the issues, that would cause trouble printing over there."
For his publishing house, it's not just about geopolitics and names and boundaries on maps. It's also that they may be publishing books with nudity, or LGBTQI content – so it's just easier to go elsewhere.
"Two things have happened. One is that is that printers tend to be looking at things and just saying, is this going to be tricky, is there going to be a long process to get through the censors on this book? The other is we'll opt to take it somewhere like Singapore instead."
In past years publishers could compromise by changing a few words, he says, but it's now become ridiculous. "Because there are changes that you feel are not legitimate as a publisher and as an ideas machine, to make. And there are very good printers in Singapore, Thailand – and Taiwan, actually."
'Blunt and unsubtle'
Nicola Legat, a former journalist and Metro editor, is now in charge of publishing at both Massey University Press and Te Papa Press – and it was in that role that she recently published Dressed, a beautiful big colour history of fashionable dress in 19th Century New Zealand.
"What we tend to do now is, before we send a book for print, we pretty carefully scour through it," she says. "But with this particular book, it just all seemed – yet there were two things in it, that had completely slipped our attention."
The first was a sentence about a drapery store in 19th Century Wellington that was selling long lengths of beautiful silk from China. The second was a reference to the mulberry plant, from which silk is made, being endemic in Taiwan.
"So because our printer goes through the PDF with a fine tooth comb, those two things popped up. They notified us and said this would come to the attention of the censor. And we would need to change the mentions of 'China' everywhere to 'People's Republic of China' – which of course would be rather a ludicrous thing to do, given that it didn't exist in the 19th Century.
"So I just removed them altogether and just changed it to the Far East, to get around that little issue."
"The concern with the Chinese rules is that they seem very blunt and unsubtle – just mention China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or any Chinese political figure and it’s a reject. This is sad for two reasons: it prevents New Zealand publishers using companies that are undoubtedly among the world’s best printers and in our part of the world, and it takes work away from the printers!" – Mary Varnham, Awa Press
Legat, who has published about 200 books over the past seven years, agrees the scrutiny has become tougher and that publishers have gradually moved away from China. "It doesn't stop us from publishing what we want to publish, because there's other places that we can go to publish it. If there was no other option, obviously it would be ruinous and indefensible and paralysing. But most of the time, it's just an irritant."
Awa Press publisher Mary Varnham had planned to print Rebecca Macfie's biography of unionist Helen Kelly in China, but didn't go through with it. "The publisher, one we use regularly, simply emailed that they couldn’t print it because it mentioned Mao Zedong," she recalls. "This was rather ironic because the mention was of Pat Kelly, Helen’s father and an enthusiastic communist at the stage, having a cordial meeting with Mao in China.
"The concern with the Chinese rules is that they seem very blunt and unsubtle – just mention China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or any Chinese political figure and it’s a reject. This is sad for two reasons: it prevents New Zealand publishers using companies that are undoubtedly among the world’s best printers and in our part of the world, and it takes work away from the printers!"
Craig Gamble is publishing manager for Te Herenga Waka Press (previously known as Victoria University Press) and he is also deputy president of the Publishers Association.
"It's just an ongoing problem, something that we have to adapt to, and it's just a shame that it's impacted some of our relationships," he says. "Because the printers are good at what they do, and we enjoy working with them."
Gamble's not concerned about any impact on democratic freedoms, in the same way that some authors are. "I don't think that that's gonna stop anybody printing a book – I think you'll find a way as we all do. We can be flexible about where we end up sending our business – that's the way the world is."
Avoiding conflict
Not all publishers are feeling greater constraints on their publishing in China. Some of the bigger commercial publishers, while acknowledging the tightrope they must walk, say it hasn't got any more difficult in recent times.
In 2020, Penguin Random House published a children’s book about Jacinda Ardern, called Taking the Lead. The book recounted how leaders including the Dalai Lama had praised her actions after the Christchurch mosque shootings – but the Hong Kong printers wouldn't have it.
"We felt angry, for obvious reasons: a foreign government infringing on our free speech; a sense of being bullied; an awareness we’d compromised, even caved in." – David Hill, author
Author David Hill wrote in NZ Author of trying to find somewhere else to print it, without success. They were booked up months ahead– so in the end the publisher had to remove the Dalai Lama reference. "We felt angry," he wrote, "for obvious reasons: a foreign government infringing on our free speech; a sense of being bullied; an awareness we’d compromised, even caved in."
Claire Murdoch, from Penguin Random House, doesn't comment on specific cases, but does say that New Zealand publishers send a great deal of their work to Hong Kong printers and their factories in southern China. It has been many years since it has been possible to find printers in New Zealand to print certain big, illustrated hard-cover formats that New Zealanders loved, especially in the nonfiction market, she says.
"It's been a long time since these could be produced in New Zealand at all, which is not that different from a lot of other industries disappearing from New Zealand," she adds. "I think of the fashion industry, I think of film.
"If I was about to publish a book that was super-critical of the Chinese government, or where their laws are in conflict with our own values or our authors values, then we obviously wouldn't print it there. We'll take steps to avoid bumping into the laws of China."
When to take a stand?
Upstart Press director Kevin Chapman says he's has a couple of issues on books with mapping – like a historic map that they insisted should incorporate People's Republic regions that were not, then, part of China. Sometimes he had argued his corner and the censors had relented. In other cases, they'd just moved their printing to another country.
"What they're saying is, we're not going to stop you from printing in Malaysia, or Singapore, or India or anywhere else. We're just not printing something that we that we don't believe. I don't see that as an attempt to censor New Zealand content, I see that as the Chinese simply making a decision about what they'll do within their borders.
"We try and operate ethically. But we also try to make the right decisions for the business. This is a very slippery slope and a very difficult area, because as soon as you start to make decisions about the politics of your partners, then you have to make a lot of difficult decisions." – Kevin Chapman, Upstart Press
"So, yeah, you could get pretty high minded about it. But but as long as we have choices – if we didn't have choices, then you might have a case.
"We try and operate ethically. But we also try to make the right decisions for the business. This is a very slippery slope and a very difficult area, because as soon as you start to make decisions about the politics of your partners, then you have to make a lot of difficult decisions.
"So as somebody that marched against apartheid, and wouldn't buy anything from South Africa for many, many, many years, I would say that at times you draw a line in the sand.
"And other times you say, this is not quite the place that I need to draw the line in the sand. And all of those are individual decisions. There are people that are doing things so repugnant that you feel you can't do business with them. And there are people that are doing things that you find repugnant, but you don't want to start punishing people that you don't think are responsible for those decisions.
"It's easier to march against apartheid because you had a whole portion of the population supporting and voting for that particular repugnant bloody system," he concludes. "It's a bit harder to say to a printer in the Shenzhen, we're not gonna do business with you because we don't like what your government's doing to a particular ethnic group. And you may well be part of a majority that doesn't agree or has no knowledge of it. It's muddy as hell."
