Academic censorship and the construction of an alternative Chinese narrative: A preliminary analysis of China Quarterly

The expanding censorship in China and its potential threats to democracy and freedom has been of growing concerns along with the rise of China in global politics, economics, and sciences. Parallel to this is the attempt of Chinese authorities to promote the “Chinese model” and construct an alternative Chinese narrative different from the Western mainstream. In this research-in-progress project, we focus on one of the recent controversies centered around academic censorship of the high-profile China Quarterly published by Cambridge University Press as a case in point to examine how self-censorship of Chinese authors might be a strategy to constructing an alternative Chinese narrative in China. Specifically, we look at the correspondence between research topics—both those deemed politically sensitive and those not—and author’s nationality and affiliation, and trace the changes over time. The analysis is based on the full records of 1713 research articles published in China Quarterly between 1960 and 2017 indexed in Web of Science, including title, abstract, author keywords, year of publication, cited references, as well as author information (e.g., full name and affiliated institution). We expect to find the emergence and declines of certain topics over time, along with the corresponding changes in authorship. Given the emphasis on intellectual freedom in education for information and library science, this research project should serve to advance our understanding of the relationship between academic freedom, academic censorship, and the narrative construction of a rising authoritarian regime