BEIJING — The dissident Chinese writer is an apocryphal beast. There are Chinese dissidents, of course, and some of them even write, but romantic images of Soviet-style repression — hostile state censors redacting novels with a red pen, writers forced to choose between humiliating submission and courageous defiance — do not apply in China today. Dissidents are regularly disciplined or imprisoned for their academic research, their journalism, their legal activism or their ethnic identity. But a mere poem rarely lands anyone in prison. The Chinese poet-hero does not exist.

For years Chinese authors in China have been writing books that get banned, with no dramatic repercussions. Yan Lianke’s examinations of the cult of Mao and tragic episodes from China’s Communist history are given a wide berth by publishers on the mainland, appearing in Taiwan and Hong Kong instead. But his novels do get published here, he goes about unmolested, and he has a prestigious position at one of China’s best universities. Sheng Keyi and Chan Koonchung have both written fiction touching on the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown without, by their own accounts, so much as a slap on the wrist.

Self-censorship seems to be the main problem. Along with Mo Yan, perhaps the most famous example, many Chinese writers appear to be avoiding controversial subjects. But if those topics don’t really incur the wrath of the government, why are these authors censoring themselves at all? In fact, the social cohesiveness of the literary establishment, rooted in traditional Chinese attitudes toward authority, is far more corrosive to Chinese writers’ artistic independence than the state itself.

This isn’t to say that official censorship doesn’t exist. A government body known as the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (Sapprft) is responsible for managing publishing in China. But it gives out most political directives as vague recommendations, and leaves publishers to interpret them. Publishers then pass on to authors a general sense of foreboding, casting it as an unfortunate but unavoidable fact of nature, like bad weather. They advise precaution, while expressing their sympathy.