Chinese surfers overturn book ban

Censors in China have bowed to pressure from the country's online community to allow eight books on the banned list to remain in shops.

However, the ban means that the book publishers will be barred from creating any extra copies of the titles, and existing copies will not be restocked when they sell out.

Stores continuing to sell the remaining books will not face fines or other action, as was originally suggested.

Opposition to the ban was voiced on blogs when news first began to circulate, with the government's General Administration of Press and Publication office coming in for criticism.

Author Zhang Yihe, whose book is one of the banned titles, also posted an open letter to the Chinese government criticising the ban.

She said it was time for all forms of censorship to end and named several apparently innocuous titles that were banned without justification.