The Sydney Morning Herald (among others) is reporting that the official Chinese language version of Hillary Clinton’s biography, Living History, has been censored by Chinese officials.

Senator Clinton’s book has become a bestseller in China, as it has in the US, and her smiling likeness decorates bookstores and airport shops nationwide.

Yilin Press, the Government-owned publisher of the mainland China version of the book, says it has become the most popular foreign political memoir in Chinese history, with 200,000 copies sold in just over a month.

But nearly everything Senator Clinton had to say about China, including descriptions of her own visits, her husband’s meetings with Chinese leaders and her criticisms of Communist Party social controls and human rights policies, has been shortened or excerpted to remove commentary deemed offensive by Beijing.

On one level, this is not at all surprising. While the government can be rather lax about content in English (which can only be read by a handful of Chinese, most of which are educated enough to know the truth behind the system anyway), but criticism of the government written in Chinese is still extremely taboo.

However, as the article mentions, “the publication of books like Living History is part of an effort to show that China is becoming a more open society.” Actions like this clearly run counter to such an effort. I’m sure Beijing is counting on the fact that the book was censored never becoming public knowledge, and they will almost certainly block the publisher’s effort to provide correct full translation of the “offensive” passages. This sort of official reaction will also almost certainly make foreign publishers think twice about licensing a book to a Chinese publisher for fear of substantial (and, in this case, license violating, according to this press release) changes being made.

Posted by John on Friday, September 26th, 2003 at 1:25 am.