Digitization has radically increased the accessibility of many forms of data and has opened up exciting new avenues of scholarly research. Censorship seldom ranks highly among the ethical and methodological considerations prompted by this growing abundance. But for scholars working on contemporary China, particularly its legal system, censorship remains a cardinal problem.

This talk strikes a cautionary note about the risks of our deepening digital dependence. Combining both traditional close reading and computational tools, the talk will document and analyze the omission of hundreds of articles from leading Chinese online academic journal databases, offering a case study on how the digital turn has enabled China to quietly export its domestic censorship regime abroad, with Orwellian ramifications for how scholars around the globe comprehend its past, present, and future.

Dr. Tiffert is the LRCCS Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in Residence and teaches in the History and the Asian Languages and Cultures departments at the University of Michigan.