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My main purpose in writing today is to make the point that The Bourne Supremacy, the novel, has pretty much nothing (beyond the title) to do with the film. As someone who knew the franchise entirely courtesy of Hollywood, this is a surprise to me.

But while I’ve got you here, let me expound on this connection, via Hollywood, with the world of Bond. As I was explaining to you all about how I had never read any of the Fleming novels, I also explained how I had, sometime in the early 80s, asked to be introduced to a good spy thriller. With The Bourne Identity out in 1980, that book might have made a good suggestion. It also would have exactly fit the kind of story I was hoping to read, probably better than the written-by-and-for-the-previous-generation Bond books. So it is a shame that I didn’t read it until now.

The Bourne Supremacy wasn’t released until 1986, so it wouldn’t have factored into that particular conversation. I’m quite sure that, by the end of the 80s, I’d heard of Ludlum, although I probably associated him with the airport novel genre (an association not entirely unwarranted). What is most interesting to me is how current this novel feels today.

The story anchors itself on the negotiation for the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China at the end of the 99-year lease (expired July 1st, 1997). The negotiations were big news at the time although the handover itself seemed to me to be impossibly far into the future.

For about a decade after the handover, it was mostly considered a non-event. All the papers said so. Although China was officially in control, it seemed that they were largely honoring their laissez-faire commitments. It is the last few years where Hong Kong’s path has veered far from where we all thought we were headed. Even a year ago, I would not have predicted the undercurrent of instability that I sense in the news today. The Chinese appetite for direct control over Hong Kong and Taiwan grows ever more apparent and the only limitation on that appetite seems to be their own self-restraint as the West struggles with problems of its own.

It is easy to read The Bourne Supremacy as a contemporary tale and I pretty much did. Its main flaw when taken this way is that there are too many British involved.

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