monitoring the interview with clipboard in hand. The segment implied that the subject is not addressed in Chinese schools. On 4 June 2007, a person was able to place a small ad in a newspaper in southwest China to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests reading "Paying tribute to the strong(-willed) mothers of 4 June victims". The accepting clerk claimed that she was ignorant of the event and believed that 4 June was the date of a mining disaster. Censorship makes researching certain topics more difficult, risky, or outright illegal. A confidential internal directive widely circulated within the CCP, Concerning the Situation in the Ideological Sphere (關於當前意識形態領域情況的通報), prohibiting discussion of seven topics, was issued in May 2013. Included on the list of prohibited topics were: constitutional democracy, universal values of human rights, conceptions of media independence and civil society, pro-market neo-liberalism, and "nihilist" criticisms of past errors of the party. In the late 2010s, a number of incidents in which Chinese authorities requested that Western publishers of academic journals, such as Cambridge University Press, carry out censorship of their articles or risk them being not disseminated in China, became public. Themes that were common elements of this censorship included: Cultural Revolution, Falun Gong, Mao Zedong, Tibet, Tiananmen, and Taiwan. During the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, investigations into the origins of the virus were censored. Historical trends Cultural Revolution The goal of the Cultural Revolution was to get rid of the "four olds" ("old customs", "old culture", "old habits", and "old ideas"). If newspapers touched on sensitive topics like these, the journalists were subject to arrests and sometimes violence. Libraries in which there were books containing "offensive literature" would often be burned down. Television was regulated by the government and its goal was to encourage the efforts of chairman Mao Zedong and the CCP. Radio was the same way, and played songs such as, "The Great Cultural Revolution is Indeed Good". Under Xi Jinping Xi Jinping has personally consolidated power and control within the state and party to an extent far greater than his predecessors Hu and Jiang. Accordingly, the intensity and range of censorship in China has increased under his rule. Xi has overseen the increased coordination and consolidation and of censorship authorities, raising their efficiency, and under his leadership censorship practices have tightened. Xi has also emphasized a country's right to "cyber sovereignty", the ability to