More on China and Lonely Planet

The question of whether the authorities in China have something against Lonely Planet, or any other western publishing acknowledging any kind of independence for Taiwan, is far more sensitive than I ever imagined. I’ve been getting some weird emails and comments lately regarding this issue, since it seems that I ‘started it’ and that I’ve been reflecting negatively on China. I believe anybody following my blog knows that’s never my intention.

A long list of blogs have discussed this story, trying to figure out if there’s indeed a problem with Lonely Planet in China or whether this is all a big laowai made up story. Discussions have also been running on whether Lonely Planet is available in stores across China, where exactly at and how the sales people respond to laowai’s inquires about the Lonely Planet.

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Story started with Guanyin’s 3 posts in 3 forums (Tapuz’s Israelis in Asia, Tapuz’s Chinese culture and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree North-East Asia) which got me started on searching the web for other similar stories which weren’t very hard to find.  I already mentioned two stories I found and here are a few more -

Earliest one I saw was from May detailed on the Yangshuo Journal

Censorship in China is a funny thing. If you search for certain (sensitive) terms you either get no results, or only the results that have been approved by the government censors. But I seem to be able to write anything here, and noone is the wiser (knock on wood). My Spanish friend Esther said that when she entered China from Vietnam, the customs agent searched her bag and confiscated her copy of Lonely Planet China. The reason: it contained "false" information; and Taiwan was a different color than China on the book’s map. So he simply took her Lonely Planet and she was left without a guide book. Yet when I entered China (both times) no one even searched by bag, let alone got close to confisating anything. And my bag contains Lets Go China, whose map of China has the exact same color scheme as Lonely Planet. Maybe it depends entirely on the attitude of the customs agent you cross. Maybe the border agents in rural China (where she crossed) are just more reactionary.

Here’s "Adventures in China" from "The Fat Website" :

So after about 20hours of airports and airplanes, i finally made it to China.  There are so many chinese people here!!

Well, my trip did not get off to the best of starts so to speak… coming thru customs, they confiscated my lonely planet for china!!  All because the little map on the back did not include Taiwan as part of China!  My first true taste of communistic china.  Ah well.

More?  Here’s "Goodbye China" telling about confiscating the book when leaving China :

I thought that they would confiscate the fake Rolex and DVDs I had… but they were only interested in our books. Lonely Planet China is illegal as it shows China and Taiwan as two separate countries! - good job they confiscated it now, and not when we entered China.

Many others started writing about their own stories or stories they’ve heard from their friends about the Vietnamese-Chinese border crossing, some going back to the time Lonely Planet wrote something about the Dali-Lama which trigged some Chinese fury. An urban myth? maybe… you decide.

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Peking Duck’s comments section regarding this story started a discussion on whether Lonely Planet is available for purchasing in China. Bingfeng replied with a funny "Mr. Laowai, how do you get your China information?"  and the whole discussion heated up pretty fast.

Marc van der Chijs wrote a controversial article on how difficult it was for him to find a Lonely Planet guide in China.

But I could not find the China guide, so I assumed it was sold out. Then I looked for the Beijing guide, and did not find it either. The Tibet guide maybe, as as preparation for next year’s bike trip? No luck. I asked the shop assistant, and he explained to me that in China it is not allowed to sell the Lonely Planet guides for China, Beijing and Tibet.

Another discussion started on the Shanghaiist’s website which resulted in another post "So, can you buy a Lonely Planet China in Shanghai or what?" and Asiapundit wraped up with a good summary talking about "the myth that that the CPC Censorship Machine is efficient".

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The main point, which I was always fascinated about, is how sensitive the Chinese are to the Taiwan issue. I even hear stories about arguments between Taiwanese and Chinese happening here in London’s English-study classes, the Taiwanese protesting against the westerners grouping them with the Chinese and the Chinese responding that the Taiwanese "insist that they’re independent but they’re not".

To get a sense of that, here’s a video about confrontation between Taiwanese and Chinese over displaying the Taiwan flag (through the wonderful new Taiwan politics group blog) :

Obviously, I can see some similarities when comparing to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but I’d like to think that it doesn’t look like that. I’m hoping that I’d be able to use the Palestine Lonely Planet to tour Jericho and Beit Lehem sometime soon.