Hillary Clinton’s ‘Hard Choices’ Blocked in China
By JANE PERLEZ

BEIJING — The new memoir of Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Hard Choices,” which gives blow-by-blow accounts of tough discussions with Chinese officials, particularly on human rights, has been blocked in China, according to the American publisher.

No Chinese publisher made an offer to buy the rights for the book to be translated into Chinese for sale on the mainland, said Jonathan Karp, president of Simon & Schuster, which published the American edition.

The English version of the book was delisted from Amazon China on June 10, the day of publication in the United States, a move that effectively barred wide distribution in China, Mr. Karp said.

In Beijing, Gu Aibin, the head of Yilin Press, the state-owned publishing house that published Mrs. Clinton’s earlier book, “Living History,” said “Hard Choices” was different. “Some of the content was not suitable,” Mr. Gu said. “The company decided not to buy the copyright.”

Import agencies and publishers were fearful of heavy fines if they sold books the government deemed embarrassing or too politically sensitive, although Chinese publishers who were offered “Hard Choices” did not offer specific reasons for declining to buy the new memoir, Mr. Karp said.

Reviewers in the United States have criticized the memoir, with some asserting that it reads like a diplomatic narrative that reveals little because Mrs. Clinton may be planning to run for president. But some of the material on China is far from formulaic.

Mrs. Clinton devotes an entire chapter to the drama of how she personally intervened to help a blind dissident, Chen Guangcheng, seek refuge in the United States Embassy in Beijing in 2012, and then negotiated over several days with furious Chinese officials to allow him to go to the United States.

Mrs. Clinton writes that when the embassy learned that Mr. Chen had escaped security guards in his village south of Beijing and had appealed to the Americans to grant him sanctuary, the decision about what to do was passed up to her.

She describes how she talked it over with her aides, knowing that Mr. Chen was waiting in a car on the edge of Beijing for the Americans to come. “I said: ‘Go get him,’ ” she writes.

In a justification, she writes that Mr. Chen and his predicament represented all the United States stood for, and that in the end it was an easy decision.

She elliptically praises Dai Bingguo, the state councilor in charge of foreign policy at the time and an official with whom she had forged a strong relationship, for defusing the explosive situation and allowing Mr. Chen to leave for the United States.

The Chinese government would interpret Mrs. Clinton’s personal involvement in the Chen case as an effort by the American secretary of state to “overturn” the regime, an editor at a Chinese publishing house said in an interview Friday. The editor declined to be named for fear of reprisals.

“Chen Guangcheng is sensitive by himself,” the editor said. “But if Hillary supported him, that’s like her going up against the Chinese government.”

The Chinese government would not under any circumstances allow the book to appear with that narrative, the editor said.

Mrs. Clinton’s “Living History” became a major best seller in China in 2003, selling 200,000 copies in the first month, but was recalled by Simon & Schuster after the Chinese publisher, Yilin, removed criticisms of China’s policies and the Communist Party without Mrs. Clinton’s permission. “I was amazed and outraged to hear about this,” she said of the censorship at the time.

The latest memoir would almost certainly be a big seller in China if it were allowed to appear, the Chinese editor said. Mrs. Clinton is not particularly popular here, but “a lot of people would buy the book whether or not they like her,” the editor said. “They are interested in her experience in politics.”

“Hard Choices,” which outlines the Obama administration’s efforts to beef up America’s military and economic presence in Asia that are viewed unfavorably in China, is being sold in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Mr. Karp said.

It will not be available at Page One, the biggest English bookstore chain in Beijing. A sales clerk at one of the stores said, “Due to some of the content, it cannot be imported.”

Asked if “Hard Choices” could be published in China without the chapter about Mr. Chen, Mr. Karp replied, “Emphatically not.”

In the United States, sales dipped sharply in the book’s second week in the stores from 85,000 copies in the first week, to 48,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, a subscription service that tracks sales.

希拉蕊回憶錄 遭陸封殺

美國前國務卿希拉蕊‧柯林頓的最新親筆回憶錄「抉擇」在中國大陸遭封殺，沒有出版商願意購買中文版權，最大進口書商之一「上海外文圖書公司」也不願販售原文版。美國「時代」雜誌分析，「抉擇」遭封殺是因為希拉蕊在書中對大陸政府語多批評，並詳細描述在一些中共最敏感的問題上與大陸高官交手經驗。

書中回顧希拉蕊擔任國務卿四年的點滴。出版這本書的美國塞門舒斯特公司總裁卡普說，大陸政府沒有明文禁售，但出版商的反應形同「封殺」這本書，「令人震驚又遺憾，明白顯示當今中國知識自由的水平低落」。

時代雜誌略舉書中可能觸怒大陸政府的段落。如2010年南韓天安艦被擊沉，希拉蕊說，在大陸阻撓下，聯合國安理會通過的決議案只能籠統譴責天安艦被擊沉，無法指出北韓是元凶，「中國的矛盾在這裡昭昭可見。北京聲稱重視穩定甚於一切，卻縱容造成深遠不穩定的赤裸侵略行為」。又如她談到大陸壓制言論：「事態在2011年愈加惡化，數十位公益律師、作家、藝術家、知識分子及社運人士被拘押和逮捕。」

希拉蕊說，她曾為大陸政府處理西藏問題的方式與時任大陸國家主席的江澤民對質，江澤民「極力堅稱西藏是中國的一部分，並要求知道美國人為什麼為那些『妖僧』執言。他斷言，藏人是『宗教的犧牲品，現在他們擺脫封建，自由了』。」她還認為時任大陸國家主席的胡錦濤「缺乏鄧小平或江澤民等前輩的個人權威，比較像疏遠的董事長，不像親掌事權的執行長」。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/world/asia/hillary-clinton-hard-choices-blocked-in-china.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20140630/c30hillary/

2014-06-29．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯李京倫