A Costly Typo for Two Chinese Editors

Xi Jinping attends the closing of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People on March 14, 2011 in Beijing, China. Xi has taken the opportunity of an upcoming political meeting to punish opponents. (Feng Li/Getty Images)

Two editors at a newspaper in Fujian Province were blamed recently for misprinting the name of Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, costing the publisher thousands of dollars in paper buy-backs and leading to a suspension for the editors.

The paper, Xiamen’s West Strait Morning Post, used the wrong character in Chinese Communist Party’s General Secretary Xi Jinping’s name in a report on the 26th meeting of the Politburo, said Radio Taiwan International.

Because the mistake was found after the edition had gone to print, several thousand copies of the paper had already gone to subscribers. The error was corrected for further printing, but the newspaper had to buy back several thousand copies that had already been printed at around 50 yuan ($8) each, according to Taiwanese news outlet Want China Times.

Almost a year ago the Nanning Evening News misspelled Xi’s name in a headline story, but their typo was found too late for corrections, and they were forced to withdraw all copies of that edition.

Xi did not comment on the issue of the misspelling, but when Wen Jiabao was premier, in 2010, a similar misspelling showed up in state run media People’s Daily. Though excited Internet users were certain that 17 or 18 editors and staff would be punished, Want China Times reports that when Wen heard of the error he called the paper to make sure no one would be disciplined for it, according to the former editor-in-chief.