Alvin Toffler, Esteemed and Edited in China

Alvin Toffler, the American futurologist, has a loyal following in China. He is held in such esteem that the Communist Party considers him among 50 foreigners -- including Karl Marx, Richard Nixon, Marie Curie and Michael Jordan -- who have most significantly influenced the country's modern development.

In fact, Toffler is apparently so beloved that Chinese editors -- with the help of government censors -- decided to massage his image a bit by removing potentially controversial references to China from his most recent book, "Revolutionary Wealth."

The Mandarin edition, published by China Citic Press, adds an unauthorized preface, makes substantive changes on sensitive political issues, such as violent unrest, and deletes two-thirds of a page about what the book describes as the "cultist quasi-religious Falun Gong movement." Members of that group have been imprisoned and banned in China.

Doctoring books is not unexpected in China. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 2003 book, "Living History," famously went under the censor's knife, leading publisher Simon & Schuster to withdraw rights for the Chinese edition.

Sometimes Chinese officials haven't even bothered with copyrights, and have had to apologize for the pirating and publishing of unauthorized translations. At least one of Toffler's previous books was pirated in China. But rights to "Revolutionary Wealth" were properly purchased.

The censorship "doesn't completely surprise me, especially given the nature of what some of the passages say," said the 78-year-old Toffler, best known for his 1970 book "Future Shock."

His reaction to the changes, he said, was more bemusement and dismay than anger because he considers the book to be quite friendly to China. "Revolutionary Wealth," written with his wife, Heidi, analyzes global redistribution of wealth in this accelerated age of social and technological development, and deals only briefly with China.

"It would have been more elegant Chinese diplomacy or manners to have discussed them with me in advance," said Toffler in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "Some of the changes could have been altered, but unfortunately there was no advance discussion of the changes that would be made."

Who changed Toffler's book?

In Beijing, staffers at China Citic Press said they had no details. The editor of the Chinese language edition, Huang Xi, was on vacation and colleagues said he was unavailable. Huang did not answer calls to his cellphone number. A colleague, Liu Junnan, referred questions to the chief editor's office.

A spokesman in that office also said he had no information. "As you know, the national conditions of China and the U.S. are very much different," said the spokesman, who identified himself as Mr. Peng. "China has its own policy on publications."

In the copyright department, a staff member, Li Yinghong, said 60,000 copies of "Revolutionary Wealth" had been printed. The Communist Party newspaper has said the book is a bestseller.