How pervasive are these blacklists, exactly? I took International Relations classes with a lecturer whose specialist field of interest is China, and his writing on the subject of China's attitude towards human rights, the resistance to democratic reform and a full-length book on Mao doesn't seem to have stopped him from being able to get a visa, or even from briefly living in China and affiliating himself to a Chinese university.
Is it possible the self-censorship is not only worse than actual attempts to censor Western scholars, but would be a potential issue for academics serious about studying China even if China had a completely free press due to fear of offending cultural sensibilities? What's the standard of academic discourse on the Rape of Nanking for scholars with aspirations to study in Japanese institutions like?
China can censor scholars publishing in China, but it cannot directly censor scholars publishing outside. Hence the phenomenon in this article: visa bans and other methods of pressure that aim at getting scholars to censor themselves.
And re: Japan, I'm not aware of Japanese authorities denying visas to academics on the basis of their beliefs. There's no comparable issue here anyway: Japanese textbooks do cover Japanese war crimes in detail, with denialists a marginal fringe, while denial of the Tiananmen massacre (etc) is official PRC state policy.
> Japanese textbooks do cover Japanese war crimes in detail, with denialists a marginal fringe
While I agree that denialists might be marginal, I wasn't aware that textbooks cover war crimes "in detail"? My only personal experience is as an exchange student to Fukuoka in 96-97 -- and there certainly wasn't much "detailed" coverage of Japanese war crimes in second year of high school as I recall.
But that's a few years ago now, maybe the curriculum has been updated?
Well, that's going to depend on how much detail you expected: Japan has several thousand years of history and a dozen years to teach it all to each child, with 50+ approved textbooks to choose from.
Is it possible the self-censorship is not only worse than actual attempts to censor Western scholars, but would be a potential issue for academics serious about studying China even if China had a completely free press due to fear of offending cultural sensibilities? What's the standard of academic discourse on the Rape of Nanking for scholars with aspirations to study in Japanese institutions like?