Like millions of young readers around the world, Chinese children have grown up with popular titles such as Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox and the Harry Potter series.
But Beijing is now introducing new measures to restrict access to foreign books and publications as it opens a new front in its battle to limit outside influence on Chinese society.
Regulators have given verbal instructions to publishers to limit the number of children’s books written by foreign authors made available in China, according to three people with knowledge of the order. The decision would reduce the thousands of children’s titles published in Chinese translation every year to just a few hundred, one of them said.