Below the fold are two paragraphs are from what is left of Isaac Stone Fish's February 17 Newsweek article "Charity Case -- Whether they like it or not, China has been good for Tibet" [as it was translated into Chinese and published in 参考消息 Cānkǎo Xiāoxí, China's answer to Courrier International].
Bruce Humes does a nice job of highlighting which parts of Fish's original article were censored [abridged] and which parts of the 参考消息 Cānkǎo Xiāoxí version were inserted by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda [conscientious editors].
In the left column is the original Chinese text of the article as it was translated, edited and published by 参考消息 Cānkǎo Xiāoxí. On the right is the corresponding English text from Fish's actual article:
对西藏来说,中国是合适的 | 美国《新闻周刊》 2月17日文章 艾萨克 斯通 菲什 | | China Has Been Good For Tibet | U.S. Newsweek (February 17) Isaac Stone Fish |
原题:慈善实例 | | Original Title: Charity Case |
奥巴马总统本周与达赖喇嘛
340;会面充满争议,这件事已经
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159;其领土的一部分,此次会晤
是对其内政的不必要干涉。
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为一个受中国统治压迫的民
063;的代表。然而事实上,中国
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215;了繁荣的经济。看看经济增
长、生活水平、基础设施、
269;内生产总值,有一件事十分
明显:对于西藏来说,中国
159;合适的。 | | President Obama's controversial meeting with the Dalai Lama will take place this week. But most Americans still see the Dalai Lama as the representative of a people oppressed by Chinese rule. Despite China's many blunders in Tibet, it has erected a booming economy there. Looking at growth, standard of living, infrastructure, and GDP, one thing is clear: China has been good for Tibet. |
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3;国的公司工作。 | | "I was amazed at the amount of money actually being spent in these villages," said Melvyn Goldstein, codirector of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University. Goldstein found that "health-insurance plans are getting better, bank loans are now more accessible, schooling is free for primary school and middle school, and access to electricity and water is improving." At the improved schools, students learn Mandarin, which gives Tibetans access to work opportunities in government offices in Tibet and in companies throughout China. |
Next, below are the same two paragraphs that Bruce Hume marked up with deletions of the original text crossed out and additions indicated by brackets:
Bruce Humes » Newsweek via Cankao Xiaoxi: The Tibetans Have Never Had it So Good
| President Obama's controversial meeting with the Dalai Lama [will take place] this week has already infuriated China and stirred up Tibet advocates who thought it should have come sooner. China says Tibet is part of its territory, and that the meeting represents an unwanted intrusion into its domestic affairs. But most Americans still see the Dalai Lama as the representative of a people oppressed by Chinese rule. Tibetans feel chafed by the restrictions on their political and religious freedoms; many are dissatisfied with Chinese rule, and this has led to widespread rioting over the past few years. They want self-determination; fair enough. But that seems to be the only story about Tibet that is ever told. The other story is that, for [Despite] China's many blunders in [Tibet] mountainous region, it has erected a booming economy there. Looking at growth, standard of living, infrastructure, and GDP, one thing is clear: China has been good for Tibet. |
| <...> |
| "I was amazed at the amount of money actually being spent in these villages," said Melvyn Goldstein, codirector of the Center for Research on Tibet at Case Western Reserve University. Through extensive rural fieldwork in the TAR, Goldstein found that "health-insurance plans are getting better, bank loans are now more accessible, schooling is free for primary school and middle school, and access to electricity and water is improving." At the improved schools, students learn Mandarin, which gives Tibetans access to work opportunities in government offices in Tibet and in companies throughout China. |
Go to Humes's link see the entire article in Fish's original compared to the Cānkǎo Xiāoxí version. It's disheartening to see what is cut out. And in some cases puzzling. For example, although the following paragraph offers evidence of constructive Communist Party attention to Tibet (with a plug for "a healthy eco-environment", to boot), it was removed entirely:
| Last month, President Hu Jintao held the Communist Party's fifth Tibet planning conference, the first since 2001, to strategize on the upcoming years. He said that Tibetan rural income will likely match China's average by 2020. And he stressed the need for Tibet, beset by the "special contradiction" of the Dalai Lama, to develop using the "combination of economic growth, well-off life, a healthy eco-environment, and social stability and progress." |
Worth reading as well is Humes's background remarks about 参考消息 Cānkǎo Xiāoxí:
The World according to Cankao Xiaoxi by Bruce Humes | Danwei.org
Cankao Xiaoxi (参考消息) is in fact a much-respected Chinese-language digest of the world press with a long history. Published nowadays for the public by Xinhua News Agency, until the 1980s the only eyeballs that scanned these pages were those of elite party cadres who received this sensitive, "internal-circulation" publication featuring reportage and opinion from the outside world. Claimed daily circulation exceeds several million. As a publishing consultant, I generally take such figures with several grains of salt, but in just about every city I've been throughout China, Cankao Xiaoxi is on the newsstand early in the morning, and often sold out by early afternoon.
Unlike many other publications in China, Cankao Xiaoxi implements strict standards for translation: Virtually no English is used, no content is added, and politically incorrect terms - such as the Republic of China (中华民国) - are translated directly into the Chinese if they appear as such in the original. Such practices make for a good read and have endowed the brandname with an air of authoritativeness over the years.
But there are three areas in which Cankao Xiaoxi takes liberties: It runs its own headlines, creates its own captions, and - this is the killer - deletes references deemed unbecoming to China's image.
As a minor end-note: In Hume's post, Fish's final paragraph, though decimated, nevertheless preserves a single sentence:
| Tibetans have benefited -- a fact Obama might keep in mind when he meets the Dalai Lama. |
But I can't find even that sentence in 参考消息 Cānkǎo Xiāoxí's online version. Maybe it was removed afterwards, or maybe Hume was working from the paper copy of the journal which might have had a slightly different version than the online version.
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(This diary was originally posted on the European Tribune. It has been slightly modified to conform to DailyKos's formatting requirements.)