Publishers under pressure as China's censors reach for red pen

Xi Jinping may boast of reading Tolstoy and Flaubert, but authors are finding their artistic freedom increasingly curtailed

It was the scrawl of red ink snaking around paragraphs that told novelist Sheng Keyi how much things had changed. Just over a decade ago, Sheng’s best-selling breakthrough novel, Northern Girls, was published uncensored in mainland China to critical acclaim.

But last month, as editors prepared to launch a third edition of the book, the author was informed that parts of her text were no longer publishable.

Spring, a time of growth, the crazy mating season, was also the time for the annual peak of public education activity at the hospital. Those who exceeded the bounds of family planning policies and found themselves pregnant again had to have abortions.

After the second child, it was time to talk permanent solutions. Each couple needed to make arrangments for husband or wife to have a procedure. Either would do.

He was lucky – his wife had given birth to three sons all at once. She was unlucky – she had given birth to three sons all at once, so had to submit herself for the operation.

As it turned out, her luck was not all bad. The doctors reported that she had a rare condition that made her unable to go under the knife. She felt as if a glimmer in the dark of night had burst forth into the bright light of morning.

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