Me and My Censor

BY EVELINE CHAO |OCTOBER 26, 2012

My first day of work in Beijing, my boss asked if I knew the "Three Ts."

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The Three Ts, he informed me, were the three most taboo topics to avoid in Chinese media -- Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen.

For the next two years, I served as an editor, then managing editor, of an English-language business magazine called China International Business.

Technically, we were the only officially sanctioned English-language business publication in mainland China. There were a handful of other English-language magazines in town, mostly listings and entertainment mags along the lines of Time Out.

Every legally registered publication in China is subject to review by a censor, sometimes several. Some expat publications have entire teams of censors scouring their otherwise innocuous restaurant reviews and bar write-ups for, depending on one's opinion of foreigners, accidental or coded allusions to sensitive topics.