BEIJING - The Chinese government responded to President Bush's call for religious tolerance yesterday by editing out his remarks on freedom and faith in its transcript of a speech that Bush delivered on national television.
Before the US leader had boarded Air Force One to return to Washington, China's state-controlled media put out its version of the address he had given to an audience of university students.
Almost half the speech - large chunks extolling American liberty and urging China to relax its political and religious restrictions - was simply hacked out in the transcript released by the official New China News Agency.
Bush's speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing, along with a half-hour question-and-answer session afterward, was broadcast yesterday morning on China's premier television channel, which reaches hundreds of millions of households. It was only the second time an American president has addressed the Chinese people directly, and one of Beijing's most widely read newspapers publicized the event beforehand.
The excised portions of Bush's speech contained praise for America's civic spirit and its status as ''a beacon of hope'' for people around the world. Bush's criticism of some Chinese textbooks' portrayal of US society also was dropped. So were his comments on his personal faith.