hard choicesAlthough “Hard Choices” by Hillary Clinton has been published already in a Chinese translation in the free and democratic nation of Taiwan, complete with front page newspaper coverage, communist Chinese publishers in Beijing have nixed publishing the account of Clinton’s four years as U.S. secretary of state. No English edition will be available in China.

“Hard Choices” has also been removed from the communist country’s Amazon site. “It’s outrageous and unfortunate,” Clinton’s American editor Jonathan Karp said in a statement. “And it’s a pretty clear indication of the low level of intellectual freedom in China right now.”

Well, what did anyone expect? Clinton’s book is critical of the communist Chinese government. She says nice things about Taiwan. See? Beijing doesn’t want its hapless citizens living under the yoke of a tired communism to know the truth about anything, except that the day has 24 hours and a year is 365 days long. In her book, Clinton comes down hard on China’s censorship and propaganda ploys and says the country is at the “epicenter of the antidemocratic movement in Asia.”

Those words are hard to translate in a country where a Nobel Prize laureate, Lui Xiaobo is in jail right now serving an 11-year term.

America, wake up. Your “partner” in Asia is one huge den of lies and contradictions. The proof is in this recent pudding putting Clinton’s book in the remainder bin. Beijing doesn’t like the truth.

Clinton’s memoir is not the only kind of literature coming under fire in China. According to the laws of the People’s Republic of China pornography is illegal. And it’s a rule that extends to erotic literature, too,  with Beijing’s e-publishers having to work hard to stay ahead of the booming underground market in online porn.

A nation that refuses  to publish Clinton’s new book and puts Nobel Prize winner for literature in jail for 11 years is not going to be a place where online porn is going to have an easy time. Makes one wonder what will be blocked next?

3 COMMENTS

  1. @MichaelPerry, lol!

    UPDATE:
    ”Chinese Book Importer Scraps Plans To Distribute Clinton’s Memoir”
    June 30, 2014

    Seems even the English language ediition of her book is verboten in the USSR, er, China.

    NEWS STORY:

    BEIJING (AP) — A book importer in China said Monday it scrapped plans to distribute Hillary Clinton’s ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDITION of the memoir “Hard Choices,” which talks about Chinese censorship and a dissident who took refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, due to sensitive content.

    Shanghai Book Traders canceled after discovering the content, said an employee of the company, who would give only his surname, Hua. He refused to say which parts of the book the importer deemed ”sensitive”.

    China’s authoritarian government tightly controls access to information and censors the media. Shanghai Book Traders’ parent company is Shanghai Century Publishing Group, which is owned by the Shanghai city government.

    The publisher, Simon & Schuster, said last week that it regretted that no Chinese publishers had been allowed to translate and distribute the book and said it was also disappointed that the English-language version wasn’t available in the mainland.

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