Canadian professor and culture warrior Jordan Peterson has earned quite a reputation in the West and is now branching out into the world’s most populous nation.
His self-help book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos has received a Chinese translation and is now being distributed in the country by Cheers Publishing. The company has yet to reveal its numbers on the book’s sales.
Steve Shi, the book’s Chinese translator, is a former student of Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto. He told The Globe and Mail, a Canadian daily, that Peterson has a broad popular appeal in China because people there are just as “tired and exhausted” with consumerism as they are in the West.
Chinese censors have reportedly left out some sections of the book that contained biblical references and criticised communism, Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution, and China’s now-suspended one-child policy.
Online writer Wei Jianfeng told The Globe and Mail that “many Chinese young people hate political correctness, such as the idea of feminism and equality for all".
“Mr Peterson stands out, telling people that he’s tired of these baizuo, too", he added, using a derogatory Chinese term for Western people who embrace left-wing ideologies.
Jordan Peterson has become “an ambassador” for people in China who oppose such thinking, Wei said. “We can totally see Peterson as an opponent of Trudeau’s in that sense".
