Leaving China? Your Books, Maps and DVDs May Be Confiscated

choi

Julie Makinen, Leaving China? Your Books, Maps and DVDs May Be Confiscated. Los Angeles Times, Oct 26, 2015.
http://www.latimes.com/world/asi ... 20151026-story.html

Note:
(a) The German surname Kirchner: from Middle High German kirchenaere ‘sexton’
(b) "Weeks later, though, Kirchner's moving company called to say that customs authorities inspecting her shipment found a book that included an objectionable Taiwan map. Kirchner had to sign a form saying she was 'voluntarily' abandoning the book — 'The Opium War,' by Julia Lovell — even though she had bought it in Beijing. (The title recently has been taken off shelves in the city because of the map issue, booksellers say.)"

Julia Lovell, The Opium War; Drugs, dreams and the making of China. The Overlook Press, 2014.
(c) "Stephanie Ho, former Voice of America bureau chief in Beijing, said when she was leaving the city this year, packers for Sino Santa Fe pulled out a dozen books they thought might not pass muster.  Some were not surprising, like Geremie Barme's 'New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices,' [Crown, 1992; in English] and 'Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused,' a collection of Chinese fiction by various authors with a cover of Mao in pigtails. But others were freely available in China, such as a biography of Deng Xiaoping written by his daughter.  'They said they were just worried about the huge picture of him,' Ho said."
(d) "Expatriates who have been living in China since the 1990s say they had never heard of such outbound seizures occurring regularly until recently. But [University of British Columbia] history professor [Tim] Brook opens his 2013 book by recalling how Chinese border guards confiscated a map from him in 1976 as he was crossing into Vietnam.  In Brook's case, the map was printed by a state-run Chinese press and openly sold in China, and it showed China's sovereignty extending throughout the South China Sea — a provocative claim that remains the source of severe tension with neighbors including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines * * * (Ironically, Brook's Chinese publisher requested the map confiscation be excised before his book could be printed in China.) * * * Now, it's putting out its own maps [that include South China Sea as its territorial waters]— and seizing those it doesn't like."

(e) "Adelhardt, a reporter for the German broadcaster ARD, said she was forced to abandon two books determined to be 'against the Chinese government': Chan Koonchung's sci-fi novel "The Fat Years" and Jonathan Fenby's 'History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power. [1st ed: Ecco (an imprint of HarperCollins), 2008; 2nd ed: Penguin UK, 2013]' "
(i) ARD (broadcaster)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARD_(broadcaster)
(is the world's second largest public broadcaster; Owner: ARD members; Launch date: 1950)
(ii) "Chan Koonchung's 陈冠中 [born in 1952 in Shanghai; raised in Hong Kong] sci-fi novel 'The Fat Years' "

The Fat Years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fat_Years
(First published in traditional Chinese versions in 2009 in both Hong Kong by Oxford University Press and also in Taiwan by the Rye Field Publishing Co 麥田出版 under the title 盛世—中國2013年. to date it has never been published in mainland China)

The English edition:
Chan Koonchung (translator: Michael S Duke), The Fat Years; The book no one in China dares publish/ publisher: Nan A Talese, 2012.