Hong Kong writer Leung Man-Tao recently published a blog post describing a strange incident. He’d bought a large number of books in Taiwan and before returning, entrusted the hotel clerk to have the books shipped to Hong Kong. Three books never made it. The hotel’s shipping partner, Shunfeng Express, refused to deliver them due to alleged inappropriate content.
The books were deemed inappropriate were the Chinese translation Robert Bickers’ Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination, the Chinese translation of The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left by Yuval Levin, and a Journal called Intellectual History published by Taiwan’s Center for Political Thought.
On January 2, 2019, Chinese President Xi Jing Ping proposed a policy called “One Country, Two Systems” as a set of guidelines for Taiwanese and Chinese unification. This incident demonstrates that the Chinese government is already backtracking on this proposed policy. Hong Kong is increasingly falling under the same restrictions as any other Chinese city. What happened to Mr. Leung doesn’t add any weight behind President Xi’s proposal.
The role of a large corporation in this act of censorship is also concerning. Huawei is striving to convince the world that it can be a trustworthy 5G provider. If SF Express, the second largest Chinese delivery company, censors content on behalf of the Chinese government, how can consumers possibly believe that Huawei won’t take part in the same?