[anovio]

I wish there was an auto summation tool or keywords of major topics for every link. I wonder how many good articles are closed immediately after they're opened simply because of the word count.

Back on topic, do they actually print copies of the translated version in China? It would be mighty ironic if that is the case.

[desdiv]

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four is just the kind of book that you would expect to be banned in China – all that talk of Big Brother, Newspeak and the rewriting of history is far too close to the bone, surely. So I was amazed to come across it on open sale in a state-run bookshop, in Yanji 延吉 on the North Korean border in fact. Nineteen Eighty-four is all over the place in China, it turns out.

A Chinese website lists no fewer than 13 translations published in the PRC between 1985 and 2012, and it’s easy to find at least three or four downloadable or online translations on a quick internet search.

They are indeed printed in China, and are openly sold in China, without any government censorship surprisingly.

[duaneb]

> They are indeed printed in China, and are openly sold in China, without any government censorship surprisingly.

Censorship applied to materials about censorship seems like it's made for the Streisand effect—look at the vibrant samizdat culture in the soviet union. A much better way is to have it fall into insignificance out of lack of cultural application. You can bet they measure up well to a government that exercises prosecution of thought crime.

[DanBC]

I'd be interested to know if it had ever been banned there (which is a very different question about what happens now).

And let's not forget the number of times it has been challenged in US schools for communism (even though it is anti-communist) and for sexual content. http://www.deletecensorship.org/downloads/booklist_hpb.pdf

[bcoates]

I have no idea how popular the translated versions are, but the English-language bookstore I visited on a tourist street in Beijing had a decent selection of Orwell but no 1984 or Animal Farm (you'd probably have the opposite problem in a US bookstore, with those two available but none of his Socialist stuff.)

Also missing from the 20th century canon in an decently-sized bookstore were Catch 22 and The Catcher in the Rye but that might be more a regional taste/popularity/vulgarity thing.

[timguoqk]

Of course you can buy it. In fact it's pretty popular. http://www.amazon.cn/%E4%B8%80%E4%B9%9D%E5%85%AB%E5%9B%9B-%E... Other books like The Brave New World are also openly sold.

[SiVal]

"Of course"? There is no "of course" when it comes to freedom of the press in China. "It happens that" you can buy it. Someone in a position of authority decided that it, unlike many other things, would be allowed. That's all.

My Chinese tutor in 1985 was a grad student from Beijing University. He once quoted Animal Farm to me. I was surprised he had read it. He told me that the Party made it available on a "need to know basis", in English only, to students in English programs at top universities.

Things have opened up a lot since then. Animal Farm is available, in Chinese, in urban bookstores. But some things that opened up for a while closed again only to reopen later. It's not as if it's just foreign propaganda that the Chinese exercise firm state control over media.

These days, an old book with allegorical criticism of general socialist/communist concepts won't usually be considered enough of a threat to ban, but more up-to-date and specific criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, its policies, or its leadership often will be. It's hardly a matter of course to the outside world what the opaque information control process in China will be doing at any given time.

[seanmcdirmid]

Much of the book/media selling industry is very informal, so a book/movie/tv show that goes on the banned list can actually become more available as the Pirates take it as a signal that it might be of interest.

[protonfish]

Interesting idea about article length. I typically start reading without looking at the length. If the article is interesting I'll continue reading or just leave the tab open to finish later. If it starts to suck, I'll check the length and if it doesn't end quickly, hit the back button.

[LLWM]

How is that ironic?

[wonnage]

That's what instapaper is for.

[Dorian-Marie]

Conciseness is a quality too

[contingencies]

'concision'; better: 'brevity'