China bans international children’s book to protect the national literature…

The second issue that I want to comment on is also similar and about picture books being banned in a different country for different reasons. In this case it is about China banning international children picture books. The order has been to cut the numbers and copies printed locally of those books in with the goal of preventing “an ideology influx” (Haas, Benjamin, and Tom Phillips. “China Cracks down on Foreign Children’s Books.”). It started as an aggressive crackdown of a communist party on children’s literature that was against “supposedly hostile western ideas”. Some of the titles affected by this are Winnie-the-Pooh. Peppa Pig, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory andJames and his Giant Peach, which are all written by American authors.

With its increasing population, especially of younger ages, who would read children’s literature books, the country is losing an opportunity in different aspects to get these books out for all those children. With the bigpopulation and those popular international titles, the population would be able to expand their culture and diversity, and to read different things. Also, it could be a success for the Chinese publishers and literature. However, it could also be seen the other way in which the national literature and authors are being surpassed and their success is being stepped on by the international authors, which could eventually be seen as something negative for the country and their nationalism.  It was mentioned in the article that the government had “deliberately decided to constrain imported books and protect those written by Chinese authors,” which totally makes sense because as a big country they want to keep their traditions and national efforts as high as they can.

Even if one of the most popular online shopping websites called Taobao also banned the titles to “create a safe and secure online shopping environment to enhance consumer confidence environment.” It sounds like a completely different reason because it’s not like the books are making any harm to anyone, which to me sounds like a cover up so that they don’t have to say that they’re banning international works just to protect the “made in China.” However, I think that at some point it could be inevitable to have access to all these international and diverse books, especially with all the new technologies and all the websites that could be found to have access to banned literature or things in general. Protecting the Chinese from international influences has been an effort promoted by the country since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, an effort known as “The China Dream.” This does actually remind me of other similar efforts that other leaders have done to protect their countries, their people, and avoid any outside influences to take control. For example, president Trump wanting to lower American unemployment by employing Americans rather than international people, which has been done through reducing working visas, among others.

Some people have had different responses though. They are against the banning and think that it would simply not work, “I can’t imagine this restriction to be possible, because its implementation is so difficult and it also has no benefit whatever for the people or the country.” I think that it is true and it would honestly take more time and efforts than the actual benefits it would bring because eventually, the ban could disappear again. I agree with that last quote saying that it would have no benefit for the people; instead, they would be losing the benefit of reading different things, and maybe even learning from different cultures. In terms of the country, I don’t think it would have a big effect because for the most part, every other big and powerful country allows diversity and international books haven’t been any problems, especially since Chinese export their literature and many other countries read them. I think it would be better for a country to not put these bans because people learn and get educated in different aspects and could use the experience to learn and compare between literatures.

Works cited:

Haas, Benjamin, and Tom Phillips. “China Cracks down on Foreign Children’s Books.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Mar. 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/13/peppa-pig-pulled-china-cracks-down-on-foreign-childrens-books.