Zhang Yang’s (张杨) first draft of The Second Handshake, originally titled “Waves” in 1963, was just one of many versions he would write, rewrite, and circulate as a sent-down youth in Changsha. Little did he know at the time, it would become one of the most popular works of Cultural Revolution-era samizdat literature known as shouchaoben (手抄本), named for their hand-reproduction method.
Based on an amalgamation of true stories about love and science in a changing China, The Second Handshake became so big that, by 1975, it had seriously alarmed China’s leaders. Yao Wenyuan (姚文元), a member of the radical faction known as the Gang of Four, banned the reproduction of the novel and had Zhang arrested.
For the crimes of “promoting idealistic theories of human nature and genius” and “glorifying bourgeois and revisionist educational lines,” Zhang was imprisoned and sentenced to death.
Zhang’s case became one of the most well-known cases of literary inquisition (文字狱) of the Cultural Revolution era. The term itself, though, is a gesture to China’s past — to its long history of legal persecution of scholar-officials for writings deemed subversive or defamatory of the court.
The earliest recorded case of literary inquisition dates back to the Spring and Autumn period, when Cui Zhu (崔杼) executed three court historians for recording Cui’s murder of the ruler Duke Zhuang of Qi (齐庄公) in official histories.
But perhaps the most famous historical case is that of Su Dongpo (苏东坡), also known by his pen name as Su Shi (苏轼), the Song Dynasty poet who was sentenced to “penal servitude” for his poetry critical of the court and of new government policies in what became known as the “Wutai Poetry Case” (乌台诗案). Su’s first indictment took particular issue with the popularity of his writings, stating: “there is nothing he has not slandered or ridiculed. The common people therefore expect that as soon as there is a flood or a famine or an outbreak of banditry, Su Shi will surely be the first to criticize the situation, attributing all blame to the New Policies.”
Paranoid about maintaining its legitimacy as a Manchu-led dynasty ruling over a Han Chinese majority, the Qing Dynasty was infamous for its aggressive censorship campaigns, which included book burnings and the sentencing of more than a hundred individuals to death.
Contemporary observers of China might readily see echoes of imperial literary inquisition in the actions of the Chinese Communist Party leadership today. In recent years, writer and blogger Yang Hengjun (杨恒均) was sentenced to a suspended death sentence in 2024 for espionage after years of detention, while citizen journalist Zhang Zhan (张展) received four years for her COVID-19 reporting from Wuhan. Legal scholar Xu Zhiyong (许志永) and activist Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) were sentenced to 14 and 12 years respectively in 2023 for “subversion of state power” after organizing informal gatherings to discuss governance. Publisher Geng Xiaonan (耿潇男) received five years in prison in 2024 for “illegal business operations” related to publishing books critical of the government.
However, in official party media and writings, literary inquisition is a concept grounded squarely in China’s historical, pre-socialist past. For the CCP, which has cast itself as liberator, literary inquisition is a phenomenon which exposes “the barbaric, arbitrary, and cruel nature of the feudal legal system.” State media has recently wielded the term against President Lai Ching-te (赖清德) and the Democratic Progressive Party (民进党), Taiwan’s current governing party. Chinese media brands their policies as “green literary inquisition” or “modern-day literary inquisition” — “green” being a reference to the color associated with the DPP. By linking Taiwan’s democratic government to imperial-era oppression, Chinese state media attempts to cast the DPP not merely as politically misguided but as inherently illegitimate and feudal.
As recently as March 2025, Chen Binhua (陈斌华), spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, invoked the concept at a press conference. The context was investigations into a police officer in Taoyuan and a school principal for pro-China content on their Douyin social media accounts. Taiwan prohibits civil servants from using TikTok and Douyin on government devices, and the officer had identified himself as a public servant in the Zhongli Police Precinct while posting “I am Chinese” (我是中國人) and an avatar reading “I love the motherland” (我愛祖國). Chen called these disciplinary actions “an out-and-out contemporary ‘literary inquisition'” (不折不扣的当代”文字狱”), accusing the Lai administration of engaging in “green terror” (绿色恐怖) and creating a “chilling effect” (寒蝉效应) that “brutally deprives Taiwan compatriots of their basic rights and freedoms.”
The irony of such accusations is stark. Taiwan itself endured decades of genuine suppression of speech under authoritarian KMT rule from 1945 through the 1980s, including widespread arrests and executions for political dissent. But after the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan began its transformation into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies, where freedom of speech now ranks among the highest in the region.
