From The Toronto Star:
Like a dove flying a gauntlet, my article flew out of my hands at 6 p.m. and landed in the next day’s paper a flightless, ugly thing. It sailed the jet streams of copy editors, senior editors, and night editors, both foreign and Chinese, losing a feather here, a quote there, a harsh edge, a word, a thought, an idea, and, eventually, its point. What I read the next morning was still, in its discussion of political theory, riskier than the state-owned China Daily’s usual fare, and that consoled me a little. But it had no bite.
Soon after I arrived as an intern at China Daily, I was asked to profile Daniel A. Bell, a Canadian professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. He teaches political philosophy, a touchy subject in China.After a few emails and our first encounter, it dawned on me that I would need to tread controversial territory. First, there was only one reason his academics focused on China: He fell in love with a Chinese woman in the tense, pre-tragedy moments of May 1989. Second, though a communitarian and a critic of both U.S. policy and American values, he has less than glowing praise for the Party and continues to encounter various forms of censorship. [Full Text]
