Stanford University is fighting to keep the diaries, in a case framed as a battle against China's censorship.

A trial has begun in California to decide whether Stanford University can keep the diaries of a top Chinese official, in a case that is being framed as a fight against Chinese government censorship.

The diaries belong to the late Li Rui, a former secretary to Communist China’s founder Mao Zedong.

Following Li’s death in 2019, his widow sued for the documents to be returned to Beijing, claiming they belong to her.

Stanford rejects this. It says Li, who had been a critic of the Chinese government, donated his diaries to the university as he feared they would be destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party.

The diaries, which were written between 1935 and 2018, cover much of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule. In those eight tumultuous decades, China emerged from impoverished isolation to become indispensable to the global economy.

“If [the diaries] return to China they will be banned… China does not have a good record in permitting criticism of party leaders,” Mark Litvack, one of Stanford’s lawyers, told the BBC before the trial began.

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    162·
    3 months ago

    I mean, there’s a pretty obvious solution here: digitize, copy, and securely store the contents so that the Chinese government can’t erase them and then let his widow have the original, which likely has great sentimental value to her.

    Unless the fear of censorship is just a disingenuous pretense for wanting to keep a valuable object…

    • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      3 months ago

      Do you believe that 100 years from now that it would be easier to claim modifications were made to a digital copy? Seems to me having the original might lose an entry or two and the claims would be the US added pages.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        Not even a hundred years. Five.

        Or less. More likely, they’ll alter digital copies that are far more favorable to the CCP. Without the original it’ll be impossible to say which is the “real” copy.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nlEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      If he donated the books to Stanford, they sound not have to be returned.

      If not, or not documented as such one could entertain the wife’s claim.