Publishing in China in the Post-Mao Era: The Case of Lady Chatterley's Lover

Abstract

Publishing and censorship in contemporary China are related subjects that have not received the attention of scholars, either inside or outside of China, which their importance warrants. Apart from sporadic notes on pre-1949 Nationalist censorship, the larger mainland libraries usually store only one systematic Chinese study of the subjects from the late Chin dynasty to the early 1950s.1 No research on these issues was conducted during the People's Republic era. Outside the country, despite the recent profusion of Western scholarship on post-Mao political and cultural life in China, attention to publishing-an important facet of culture-and the inherent role of censorship has not been vigorous. This article attempts to delineate the vicissitudes of Chinese publishing at a time when state control and censorship began to recede, and though constantly threatening retaliation, left unprecedented space since 1949 for the publishing sector to take initiatives as well as risks. The case study presented here, publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover, adds significance to this research. Publication of the book was a milestone in both Britain and America; after a 30-year ban, its successful de-censorship in a 1959 U.S. court case and 1960 British trial helped define the history of twentieth century Anglo-American publishing by contributing greatly to the formation of the so-called permissive society. The appearance of Lady Chatterley in China in the 1980s, its subsequent bannings and