Academic publisher Springer Nature bows to Beijing by blocking content in China
Company says less than 1 per cent of its articles affected and move necessary to protect access to rest of website
Academic publisher Springer Nature said on Wednesday it had blocked access to articles within China to comply with demands from the Chinese government, amid a push by Beijing to tighten controls on information from outside the country.
The company said in a statement that less than 1 per cent of its content available online in global markets had been blocked in China in compliance with “local distribution laws”.
“This action is deeply regrettable but has been taken to prevent a much greater impact on our customers and authors and is in compliance with our published policy,” the statement said. “This is not editorial censorship and does not affect the content we publish or make accessible elsewhere in the world.”
Springer Nature, which has offices around the world, says it has published more than 275,000 books and 3,000 journals, including Nature and Scientific American.
The move is the latest example of how effective China can be at leveraging its economic might to compel foreign companies to make concessions to retain access to its massive market. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government has tightened controls over information and over a wide range of groups that could feed opposition to the ruling Communist Party, including lawyers who take on sensitive cases, non-governmental organisations and churches.
The blocked articles related to topics such as Taiwan, the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and the status of Tibet, which are considered sensitive by the party, according to a survey by Associated Press. They can only be viewed with a virtual private network that allows users to skirt China’s strict internet censorship regime, known as the Great Firewall.