Official Says Unauthorized Publications Represent a Threat to China's Publishing Market

Illegal periodicals constitute a "threat," according to Liu Binjie, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, and "they violate rules and regulations on press and publications, they contravene national laws, and the activities they engage in are all-in-all illegal publishing activities." Liu made the remarks in an interview in which a reporter asked why the GAPP recently banned 60 newspapers and magazines.

See below to read further excerpts from the interview.
 

Liu told the reporter:

In recent years, as the entire cultural market has opened up, new problems have appeared concurrently with development. One of the most important problems has been a constant increase in the quantity and type of illegal publications, which has caused severe chaos in the normal order of the cultural market. . . . Illegal periodicals are a very large threat. First, they violate rules and regulations on press and publications, they contravene national laws, and the activities they engage in are all-in-all illegal publishing activities. Second, for the most part these illegal publications operate to earn a profit, their contents are vulgar, they lack a sense of social responsibility, and they are full of pornography, terrorism, violence, and lies. One could say that illegal periodicals are the garbage of the cultural industry.

Some of the titles of the banned publications include: "China Economics," "Prosperous China," "Finance and Technology," "Contemporary Mathematics and Administration," "A Guide to Government Procurement," and "Chinese and Foreign Legal Systems."

Liu told the reporter that some of the 60 publications had been banned because they violated Chinese laws against "establishing [a publication] without having obtained authorization from the government's press and publication administration department . . . ." He later reiterated this point, telling the reporter:

According to the "Regulations on the Administration of Publications" and the "Regulations on the Administration of Printing," promulgated by the State Council, no work unit or individual may engage in publishing, printing, or distributing of publications without having obtained authorization from the press and publication administration department.

Liu, who was once quoted as saying that "Currently China is one of the world's countries richest in freedom of speech and freedom of publication," told the reporter that the GAPP's future plans included the following:

• [R]igorously regulate the orderliness of publishing activities and the publishing market, and expand the scope of investigation and prosecution of major cases.
• Get a good hold on the importation of publications, and increase the scope of our attacks on the illegal importation of illegal publications.
• Establish an outstanding formal periodical online inquiry system, to make it convenient for the masses to make timely inquiries about and identification of illegal periodicals.
• [W]e shall also carry out amending and perfecting current laws and regulations with vague provisions, as well as local regulations that lack sufficiently harsh punishments, and unceasingly improve our ability to use the law as a means to restrain illegal periodical publishing activities.

With regards to the last point, Liu has previously advocated that the government should use law as a weapon to control China's press.