Thomas Piketty, ilustration -

Peter MacDiarmid / REX / SIPA

“Capitalism and Ideology”, Thomas Piketty's book devoted to the meteoric rise in inequalities in the world, will “probably” not be released in China, the French economist refusing the cuts demanded by Citic Press, his Chinese publisher, has t he announced this Monday.

“In short, they want to remove all references to contemporary China, and in particular to inequality and opacity in China.

I refused these conditions, and indicated that I will only accept a full translation without any cutting of any kind, ”Thomas Piketty said by email.

Required cuts

Considered a “rock star” of economics, the professor from the Paris School of Economics published this new amount by Editions du Seuil in September 2019, six years after the global success of his book “Le Capital au XXIe” century ”(more than 2.5 million copies sold).

"Other Chinese publishing houses in contact with my French publisher have indicated that they will also require cuts, so at this point it is likely that this book will not be published in mainland China," he added, confirming information from the South China Morning Post.

A first opus well received in China

“Citic Press had the honor to cooperate with Thomas Piketty to publish the Chinese version of 'Capital in the 21st Century'.

Both sides were happy for their cooperation.

The copyright for Thomas Piketty's new book is still under negotiation, ”said a spokesperson for the publishing house.

This first opus had sold hundreds of thousands of copies in China, and had even been praised by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had used the results of his research on the sharp rise in inequalities in the United States and in Europe as proof of the superiority of the Chinese Communist model.

Hide this unequal China that I don't want to see

But in chapter 12 of “Capitalism and Ideology”, devoted to “communist and post-communist societies”, the French economist, after having pinned down Russia's “oligarchic and kleptocratic drift”, attacks the “plutocracy” of Russia. a Chinese regime which, in terms of income inequalities, has caught up with or even overtaken Western countries.

“At the end of the 2010s, (…) China was barely less unequal than the United States, and it was clearly more so than Europe, whereas it was the most egalitarian of the three regions-continents in beginning of the 80s ”: this sentence appears besides among the 24 passages which Citic Press demanded the deletion, first at the beginning of June in the French edition, then at the beginning of August in the English edition.

Sadness to run away from dialogue

If a Russian edition is not planned, China is the only country to have formulated such demands, continued Thomas Piketty for whom this "censorship illustrates the growing nervousness of the Chinese regime and its refusal of an open debate on the various economic and political systems ”.

"It is sad that Xi Jiping's" socialism in Chinese colors "shies away from dialogue and criticism", despite the "critical but constructive perspective of the various unequal regimes on the planet and their hypocrisies" that the economist claims to have adopted in his book and which does not spare the United States any more than Europe, Brazil, India or the Middle East.

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