In October, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders met in Beijing for a plenary session centered on one topic: the rule of law. Yet around the same time, several groups on WeChat (a popular Chinese social network) described the arrests of nearly 50 Chinese activists who supported the protests in Hong Kong. Others reported on an official order to ban the publication or sale of books by authors who supported the Hong Kong protests, human-rights activism, and the rule of law. This casts serious doubt on the credibility of the government's commitment to its stated goal of political modernization.

Among the banned authors is the economist Mao Yushi, who received the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2012. This is not the first time that Mao's books have been banned.

In 2003, his work was proscribed after he signed a petition appealing to the government to exonerate the student protesters whose democratic movement ended with the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.