China’s popular review site Douban hides reviews for book on Hong Kong’s national security law after a slew of negative comments
- Douban is known for its community of liberal bookworms and film fanatics
- Censorship is common on China’s internet platforms, which are responsible for taking down content deemed inappropriate or sensitive
But on one widely-used book review site, a publication detailing the new legislation was swamped with bad reviews before the rating function was removed altogether.
An archived page from Douban shows that the book, published by the state-owned China Legal Publishing House, had a score of 2.5 out of 10 as of August 15.
Reviews were no different for this book, which documents the decision of the National People‘s Congress to pass the new law and “safeguard national security”.
“I can’t forget the despair on the night of June 30,” said one reviewer, giving the book one out of five stars.
“One stab followed by another, slicing up the Pearl of the Orient,” wrote another person who also left a one-star review, using a romantic moniker commonly associated with Hong Kong.
Others quoted from the lyrics of popular tunes from the 90s, an era considered a golden age for Canto-pop and Hong Kong cinema.
“My friends bid farewell and left the city, leaving us to rely on our great comrades to cook up new ideas,” one person wrote, reciting the lyrics to Queen’s Road East, a Cantonese pop song about the impending handover of Hong Kong from British colonial rule to China.
“Your elegance is no longer romantic, unlike before,” wrote another, tweaking the lyrics to the 1997 Mandarin song Pearl of the Orient.
Beijing’s new national security law spooks Hong Kong’s internet users
The archived page on Archive.org’s Wayback Machine is currently the only way to see these reviews, as they have all been hidden on Douban.
A notice on the site dated September 4 said that some functions will be suspended during “rectification” through October 3. But the review and rating functions remain active on the pages for many other book titles. The exception includes the pages for China’s national anthem and various apps that list the country’s laws.
A Douban representative said the company is unavailable for any interviews on this matter and referred us to its original notice.
In China, the onus is on internet platforms to take down content that might be deemed inappropriate by government authorities. In the past, some sensitive entries on Douban were removed altogether, such as the one for an episode of the satirical American cartoon South Park that mocked the Chinese government last year.
