Bill Clinton's Fake Chinese Life~
Published: October 24, 2004
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Who knew that back in Bill Clinton's early days in Arkansas, the future president and his Uncle Buddy sat around and chewed the fat, ham fat to be precise, and talked about how China was one of the world's most ancient cultures and had produced Four Great Inventions, one of which was gunpowder?
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Yet there it is, all that love of China and things Chinese, right in the latest bootlegged version of Mr. Clinton's autobiography, "My Life," sold on the cheap in mainland China and now retranslated back into English, most recently by Alex Beels in the latest issue of Harper's Magazine. The fake version reveals a Clinton family obsessed with China's strong points, with how Chinese science and technology "left us in the dust." Readers will learn that the future president, to impress Hillary's mother, had rhapsodized about such things as the Eight Trigrams, documented in "TheBook of Changes" several thousand years ago. Another retranslation of the pirated translation last summer has Mr. Clinton explaining to Hillary that his nickname is "Big Watermelon."
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In the Western publishing world - in fact, in the Western business world -such purloined texts are no laughing matter. The American Chamber of Commerce recently singled out China's lack of enforcement of laws against counterfeit goods and its failure to protect intellectual property rights as problems. American publishers estimate that they lose at least $40million a year to Chinese forgeries.
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Indeed, shoppers in Beijing routinely go to an area called Knockoff Central to buy imitation Gap sweaters or mock Timberland shoes. Some copies aren't so bad, to the chagrin of those trying to sell the real thing.
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China is not the only place where fakes are sold, of course. Counterfeit Guccis and Armanis appear with some regularity on New York City sidewalks, and the problem for publishers and other businesses is worldwide. But on the narrow issue of books - particularly books by the Clintons - China has been particularly rough. Simon & Schuster withdrew the publication rights for the Chinese publisher of Senator Hillary Clinton's book last year because of distortions and deletions in the text.
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The pirated translations of Mr. Clinton's book also delete any references to the lack of freedom in China. But these fake publishers have certainly managed to take plenty of liberties with the text. One of the best examples is the very long opening sentence of Mr. Clinton's version, which takes 48 words to detail his birth, even the stormy weather that preceded the big event. The first sentence in the pirated Chinese version says:
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"The town of Hope, where I was born, has very good feng shui."
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