Better Days

Beijing's policy towards Google is nothing new. The First Emperor of China's advisers rounded up all 'unapproved' books. Single copies were retained in the emperor's own library, and all duplicates were destroyed. It was a criminal offence to possess a banned volume. When the Qin dynasty fell a few years later, the library of censured books was destroyed, along with uncountable, irretrievable works of classical Chinese.

The First Emperor's censorship scheme removed books considered...