Got an email over last weekend from lawyer Michael Tang in NYC, who helped set up the deal with Beijing U Press and worked as part of the translation team, saying that BUP now wanted to renege on our previous deal of cutting only a minimum of wordage regarding the Chinese Communist Party and Taiwan (so long as BUP could caveat the book as reflecting my personal opinions and not reflecting any official BUP stance).

Now, apparently out of fear of recent government sackings of editors who got out of line, BUP's senior managers have returned to their demands that everything mentioning Iraq, Iran and North Korea be removed from the text, otherwise they threaten to abandon the publication, which was set for January (basically, the book is completely set for printing).

Well, I thought about for a few minutes and decided to refuse their demand, instructing Tang to tell them we'd seek publication elsewhere.

I have a couple of options through other friends in China. Neither may pan out, and my agents here in the States have warned me that BUP may simply publish the book with the cuts they desire, pretending it never heard back from me or simply ignoring what I've decided. This is, apparently, an old trick.

If this occurs, I will obtain the Chinese translation of the full book and post it on the web myself, or I will arrange for my own separate translation of the cut parts or the book in its entirety and post one or the other on the web. May take a while, but I will try to do this if this scenario unfolds.

Meanwhile, I will seek out other interested parties in China through the contacts I have, and I will instruct my agents not to approach BUP regarding Blueprint for Action.