ARTICLE 19 is alarmed by the recent decision of one of the United Kingdom’s leading museums to cede to the demands of Chinese censors. According to recent media reports, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has on several occasions agreed to remove maps and images from exhibition catalogues following pressure from their Chinese publisher. Such acts of censorship at European cultural institutions are part of broader trends in information manipulation and interference. Considering recent legislation that claims extraterritorial jurisdiction for acts that fall afoul of official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) narratives, this trend is at risk of escalating. ARTICLE 19 calls on Chinese authorities and affiliated entities to cease acts of transnational information manipulation and interference, and for global cultural institutions to resist such pressure. Authorities should use diplomatic channels to respond to China and increase support for cultural institutions and those tracking China’s foreign information manipulation and interference operations.
According to the Guardian, the V&A has removed content in exhibition catalogues on at least two occasions. Following pressure from its China-based catalogue publisher, C&C Offset Printing, the V&A removed an illustration from a catalogue for the Music is Black exhibition, which launched in mid-April. The publisher reportedly told the museum that the 1930s illustration of trade routes from the British Empire depicted map borders that conflict with directives from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), one of China’s preeminent censors, and should be removed.
In 2021, the V&A also removed a map, along with a photograph of Vladimir Lenin, from a catalogue for an exhibition on Fabergé eggs following similar pressure.
As reported by the Guardian, the V&A, like other cultural institutions in the United Kingdom, including the Tate, the British Museum, and the British Library, have all used Chinese printing firms for catalogues and books because they tend to be much cheaper than European publishers. However, in doing so, they have had to contend with information control requests on topics sensitive to the CCP, especially around subjects including Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, or Tibet.
China’s influence over European cultural institutions
As ARTICLE 19 has previously noted, exhibitions by Chinese dissident artist Badiucao have on numerous occasions faced overt pressure from Chinese authorities in Europe – for example, in Poland in 2023, the Czech Republic in 2022, and Italy in 2021. In some cases, officials from the Chinese embassy have visited the galleries to exert pressure to cancel the exhibits or deployed other tactics of transnational repression.
In 2025 the National Museum in Prague opened an exhibit in conjunction with Taiwan’s National Palace Museum to display over 100 artefacts from Taiwan’s national collection, some being shown in Europe for the first time. However, as the exhibition continued, commentators remarked on the noted absence of the word ‘Taiwan’ on panels or captions. The decision to drop major references to Taiwan appear in part because of direct pressure from Chinese authorities and affiliated harassment. Taiwan’s government reported receiving threatening emails warning that, if the exhibition proceeded, there would be arson, theft, shootings, and other attacks. The Chinese government denounced the exhibit for promoting ‘cultural Taiwanese independence’.
While some cases have been overt, China’s influence on European cultural institutions is sometimes less explicit and requires a deeper understanding of human rights issues in China and the link between cultural expression and political control.
In 2024, the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris renamed an exhibit on Tibet using the CCP-preferred term ‘Xizang’ instead of ‘Tibet’. The decision came after official Chinese narrative changes the year before, which replaced ‘Tibet’ with the Chinese word in all external communications. The push was overseen, in part, by the United Front Work Department, an institution responsible for ethnic affairs and international influence operations. The policy change has been widely opposed by the Tibetan community. Tibetan activists and scholars have argued that ‘by replacing Tibet with Xizang, Beijing aims to depoliticise the global discourse surrounding the Tibetan homeland and paper over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s colonial occupation, religious persecution, and human-rights abuses in Tibet’.
The name change policy in China is part of broader efforts at further Sinicisation of marginalised non-Han communities, which threatens erasure of unique ethnic identities. That the French museum uncritically adopted the highly politicised terminology – although it is unclear if the pressure came directly from Chinese authorities – is indicative of China’s power to adversely affect expression and cultural rights in Europe through policy changes at home.
Following campaigning from Tibetan rights groups, scholars, and civil society, including a protest by some 800 participants in Paris, the museum apologised and committed to resuming its usage of the word ‘Tibet’.
Indicative of similar pressures, in 2020, a museum in Nantes, Western France announced it would postpone an exhibition on the historical Mongolian leader Ghengis Khan ‘due to the hardening of the Chinese government’s position against the Mongolian minority’.
Initially planned as a partnership between the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne history museum in Nantes and the Inner Mongolia Museum in China, the exhibition ran into challenges over increasing information control expectations from the Chinese side. This reportedly began with demands to remove terms like ‘Ghenghis Khan’, ‘Mongol’, and ‘Empire’ from the show, and later requests for ever-greater control over other texts, maps, and communications. The hardening position from China’s censors toward the exhibit coincided with mass protests in Inner Mongolia focused on new policies to replace Mongolian with Chinese language education, in which an estimated 8,000 people were detained.
In 2023, the museum in Nantes eventually opened the exhibition, but with support from the Mongolian government and national collection, no longer partnering with China.
Increasing extraterritorial information controls must not go unchecked
Such trends are at risk of escalation in light of recent legislation in China that seeks extraterritorial jurisdiction over similarly politicised expression, which could be used to justify legal and financial threats against cultural institutions in Europe and elsewhere.
On 12 March 2026, China adopted the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, which Human Rights Watch cautioned as a ploy to justify ethnic and religious repression, or as one commentator argues, ‘to erase minority identities’. The law promotes Han Chauvinism and assimilation. Of particular concern for cultural institutions beyond China’s borders, Article 63 claims jurisdiction over organisations and individuals outside of China who fall afoul of officially sanctioned expression and other actions related to ethnicity.
Cultural institutions entering in partnership with Taiwan could also be affected by the2024 guidelines on China’s Anti-Secession Law. As ARTICLE 19 has previously warned, the guidelines claim the power to conduct trials in absentia for Taiwanese nationals and foreigners alike who commit vaguely-defined activities that support ‘Taiwan independence’.
The indication that the Victoria and Albert Museum ceded to censorship demands from Chinese authorities, coupled with numerous examples of information threats and harassment targeting other European cultural institutions, raises profound concerns over the rights to expression and information. Recent regulations through which China claims greater extraterritorial jurisdiction over varied forms of cultural expression furthermore increase the risk of legal, political, or financial pressure.
In the face of ongoing information suppression and intimidation, European cultural institutions should redouble commitments to freedom of expression, and resist efforts from China to comply with censorship demands. Meanwhile, authorities in these countries should use all available diplomatic channels to respond to China and increase their support for cultural institutions to narrow the channels through which China can exert influence. Such efforts must be grounded in timely consultation with experts on China’s human rights record at home and its tactics of information manipulation and interference abroad. When involving members of marginalised communities like Tibetans or Uyghurs or in the face of China’s information threats toward Taiwan, it is especially important that such voices be part of the dialogue process.