I come to a decision on the Chinese-language edition of PNM
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett
Dateline: in the Shire, Indy, 5 August 2005
The original, long list of proposed deletions was just too much. I just had this feeling that I would hold the Chinese version in my hand and think to myself: it wasn't worth it.
I can understand Beijing U Press being nervous about printing anything critical about the Party. Fine. I can likewise understand wanting to eliminate statements about China "threatening" Taiwan or lumping that potential conflict in with a host of others, thus suggesting the strong possibility of war with the United States over this issue. To me, that's like asking the Government Printing Office of the U.S. to publish something that predicts the demise of the GOP or suggests that the U.S. is readying an invasion of Cuba. You can counter, "But Beijing U. isn't government." But, of course, it sort of is. In ten years I don't think we have this conversation, but for now, we do.
Again, those narrow cuts I can live with and rationalize.
It was cutting all the references to Iran, North Korea and Kim, and Pentagon planning on China that was too much. Plus some cuts that involved oblique critiques of socialism or suggested possible Old Core-vs-New Core tensions. Those cuts just crossed my sense of a threshold: better not to publish if that's the price.
So I cut down the rather long list to 14 cuts, and those cuts were slimmed down individually to the very distinctly offensive phrases on the Party or Taiwan, leaving the rest in tact.
I passed this slimmed down list to the Chinese-American lawyer in NY who helped broker the deal and was involved in the translation. I have had no direct comms with Beijing U.
Here's my hope: BUP was gaming this all along, and thus proposed the larger list in the hope that I would balk but still be amenable to the far smaller list of statements on the Party and Taiwan, or the ones they might really catch hell on.
The risk here is minimal, in my mind: it's just not worth publishing with the longer list of cuts. I'd rather write them a check for the full advance myself--something I offered to do.
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