Official Discusses Economic Problems Caused by Government's Media Licensing Scheme

Liu Binjie, Deputy Director of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) told Chinese state-run television that the exercise of freedom of the press is limited to state-licensed publishers, and that authorities are considering revisions to Chinese publishing regulations to address the economic problems caused by this policy. Liu appeared on China Central Television's "People in the News" on May 19, 2006, a transcript of which was published on CCTV's Web site on May 22. Liu answered several questions about how the government's allocation of book numbers adversely affects the development of China's publishing industry. Liu's responses included the following three points:

The Chinese government's use of book numbers does not conform to the original purpose of the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). According to Liu:

[T]he original intent was that book numbers would not be limited by amount. There was an international association that everyone acknowledged. In the process of China administering [publishing], we created a new quantity concept.

According to the ISBN Web site, there is "no legal requirement to have an ISBN, and it conveys no legal or copyright protection." Under Chinese law, however, it is illegal to publish a newspaper, magazine, or book without a book number (also referred to as a "national unified publication number"). The GAPP maintains exclusive control over the distribution of these numbers to local publishers, and thereby over who is allowed to publish. GAPP officials have explicitly linked the allotment of book numbers to the political orientation of the publisher. According to an April 2005 Beijing News report, some private publishers in China put out over 100 books a year, primarily through the illegal purchase of book numbers.

The Chinese government needs to reform its publishing regulations to encourage private publishers. According to the CCTV host:

[W]e no longer discriminate against privately run businesses, and we have all sorts of laws and reports that state this plainly in writing. But as soon as we talk about publications, after all this time of everyone having only considered their relationship to ideology, the result is that private business seems to be a relatively sensitive term. So how can we see the power of private businesses in the publishing industry?

Liu said that book numbers have become commercial commodities, with some publishers not having enough, while others are unable to attract manuscripts and rely on selling book numbers for revenue. It is illegal, however, to publish using a book number that has been allocated to someone else, and the Chinese government has shut down publications and imprisoned publishers for "fraudulent" use of book numbers.

Liu did not say that the government is planning to eliminate the book number system, only that it was "currently researching formulating relevant regulations for regulating cooperative publishing." Liu did not elaborate on what "cooperative publishing" would involve. In April 2005, however, state-run media reported that the GAPP was formulating a policy to allow China's state-owned book publishers to accept private investment through joint venture stock purchases. The same month, the GAPP approved the establishment of China's first media organization that uses a shareholding system. Shi Feng, another Deputy Director of the GAPP, has said, however, that one of the goals of such reform is to establish the leadership of Communist Party committees in publishing enterprises.

Only government licensed publishing houses may exercise freedom of the press. Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution provides that every citizen enjoys freedom of the press. According to Liu, however:

[W]hy can't we allow privately run businesses to do publishing? . . . Television dramas, television documentaries, books, everyone can write these, but if I want to publicly spread them, when I want to disseminate these to society, then responsibility is necessary. That is to say, what things can be publicly disseminated to society, and what things cannot be disseminated - starting at this point, we entrust publishing houses to exercise the nation's freedom of the press.

Another report of Liu's interview published in the May 25 edition of Southern Weekend offered a slightly different account of Liu's response, reporting that he added: "Therefore, regardless of whether it is a book on whatever topic commissioned by a Party agency, a social individual, or a working office, they must all be published by a regular publishing house, and foreign countries also do it this way." It is unclear to which countries Liu was referring.

The Chinese government's book number allocation system is a form of prior restraint known as a "licensing scheme," and international human rights standards set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights uniformly reject such schemes. The constitutions of many countries, including those of Brazil and South Korea, explicitly prohibit licensing schemes. In other countries, such as the United States and India, the right to publish without having to obtain a license is protected through a combination of constitutional and court-made law. In countries that have registration requirements for publishers, such as Sweden and the United Kingdom, the government lacks the discretion to restrict the allocation of book numbers.