Taobao's Taboo Book Bonanza

For years, mainlanders resorted to Taobao, Alibaba's consumer-to-consumer online platform, to buy banned books. Most have been published outside of the Chinese mainland, in Taiwan and Hong Kong. They include both uncensored versions of books that have been published in the mainland, like Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, which preserves mention of the former Chinese leader's role in the crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, as well as books that have been banned there outright, like the traditional Chinese version of Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones, an account of modern Chinese life that contains several chapters about Tiananmen. But in August 2012, Taobao tightened a policy that required sellers to receive government certification to sell new books, and also began to delete the links to some censored or banned books. Many booksellers plying the forbidden trade have since closed shop. 

But netizens like me have adapted.

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