The Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce has begun confiscating illegal scary story magazines. The Beijing News reports that “in accordance with a government notice”:
…the seized material includes the following eight print publications: Death Note, New Ghost Stories, Hilarious Ghost Stories, Terrifying Ghost Stories, Ghost Folktales, Online Ghost Stories, Horror Stories, and Ghost Stories. These illegal publications are popular among students and can easily harm the physical and mental well-being of young people.
These publications are unlicensed, says the memo circulated last week by the Anti-Pornography and Anti-Piracy Office, and several of them claim to be published by magazine agencies with which they have no association. But it’s the ghostly and supernatural that seems to be the primary target in this sweep.
Death Note, adapted from the Japanese comic book of the same name, is the most high-profile of the group; it was singled out in the memo’s title: “Memo on the seizure of Death Note and other illegal Horror Publications.” Is this the first of a wave of crackdowns ahead of GAPP’s scheduled house cleaning of the country’s periodicals market?
Whether it’ll be at all effective is anybody’s guess. Back in 2004, Qingdao’s Municipal Press and Publication Bureau included a magazine called Terrifying Ghost Stories on a list of twelve illegal publications (image above), and the title’s still around. That version claimed to be published by “Ghost Folktales Magazines”; now it apparently carries the imprint of “Folk Legends Magazines.”
A Chinese translation of Death Note (published in Hong Kong) can be found online at Enorth.
- The Beijing News (Chinese): Beijing bans “ghost stories” city-wide
- Qingdao P&P bureau (Chinese): Confiscation memo (2004) #3 (Baidu cache)
- Earlier on Danwei: GAPP to clean up periodicals; Anti-Piracy Office shuts down a magazine