By Laurie Chen

BEIJING (Reuters) – At Beijing’s largest Panjiayuan antiques market, among statues of Mao, posters and second-hand books, there are signs warning against selling publications that could contain state secrets or “reactionary propaganda”.

Some signs display a hotline number for citizens to report to authorities if they witness an illegal sale.

China’s flea and antique markets were once a treasure trove of documents for historians, but today the signs are emblematic of the chill that reigns over their ability to do research in the country.

On the one hand, Beijing wants to increase academic exchanges, and President Xi Jinping last November invited 50,000 American students to China over the next five years, a massive increase from the current 800.

How far this movement will grow remains an open question. But scholars of modern Chinese history in particular – arguably among those most interested in China – worry that tightening censorship will put a damper on independent research into the country’s past.

This is especially true for documents relating to the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976 – the most historically sensitive period for the Chinese Communist Party – when Mao Zedong declared class war and plunged China into chaos and violence.

“I would say the days of going to flea markets and just finding treasures are pretty much over,” said Daniel Leese, a historian of modern China at the University of Fribourg.

Document research “has fallen out of fashion because it has become too complex, difficult and dangerous,” he said, adding that young foreign researchers are increasingly relying on foreign collections.

The Chinese Communist Party has exercised control over all publications, including books, media, and the internet since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, with the degree of censorship fluctuating over time.

But censorship has only intensified under President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, and has blamed “historical nihilism,” or versions of history that differ from official accounts, for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In recent years, a series of new national security and anti-espionage laws have made scholars even more cautious about citing unofficial Chinese documents.

Some scholars of modern Chinese history who have published studies challenging Chinese state discourses or addressing sensitive issues say they have been denied visas to China.

James Millward, a historian at Georgetown University, said his visa was blocked several times after he contributed to the 2004 book “Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Frontier,” but he has since received several short-term visas, albeit after a lengthy process.

The political climate also influences how historians choose their research topics. One U.S.-based historian said he chose to work on noncontroversial topics to maintain access to travel to China. He declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

China’s education ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. The foreign ministry said it was not aware of the circumstances of the case.

DOCUMENTARY DISCOVERIES

Leese and other foreign historians say they have already discovered files of persecuted intellectuals and secret Communist Party documents at Chinese flea markets and antiques markets.

These books were often donated by relatives of deceased civil servants or carefully collected by booksellers from recycling centres located near government offices closed during the mass layoffs in the public sector in the 1990s.

But since 2008, the government has cracked down on flea markets and other sources of used books and documents. Buyers have been arrested, sellers have been fined and used book sites have been cleared of politically sensitive items, according to domestic media, collectors and four foreign researchers who spoke to Reuters.

In 2019, for example, a Japanese historian was detained for two months on espionage charges after purchasing 1930s books about the Sino-Japanese War from a second-hand bookstore.

Two years later, an amateur accused of selling illegal publications from Hong Kong and Taiwan publishers on Kongfuzi, China’s largest used book website, was fined 280,000 yuan ($39,000) for not having a business license, Chinese media reported.

And this year, two employees of a recycling center were punished for selling confidential military documents, state media reported.

Buyers now cultivate personal relationships with merchants who sell via WeChat, said a Beijing-based collector interested in Cultural Revolution documents, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Historians also note that access to the vast majority of local government archives has been restricted since 2010 and that their digitization has allowed censors to expurgate them massively.

Overseas-based historians add that their mainland counterparts can only preserve documents for posterity in the current political climate. But not all are pessimistic.

“Even under Xi Jinping, Chinese scholars continue to seek openings and expand the understanding and interpretation of PRC history,” said Yi Lu, an assistant professor of history at Dartmouth College who has worked extensively with Chinese academic collections of 20th-century documents. “All is not lost.”

(Reporting by Laurie Chen; editing by Edwina Gibbs)