The new editions are more closely modelled on the originals, using similar layout and style, but certain adaptations were necessary.

Tintin in Tibet has become Tintin in Chinese Tibet, to reflect Beijing's claim that Tibet is part of China.

And the Chinese publishers - China Children Publishing House - have decided not to market Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, deeming it anti-communist.

Cliché

Boy reporter Tintin did go to China in The Blue Lotus, in 1936.

In that book, he battled with Japanese-funded opium smugglers, aided by a young Chinese called Chang.

Unlike other Tintin characters, Chang was modelled on a real person - the late Chinese artist Chang Chong-jen, who helped Tintin creator Hergé to portray China realistically.

Chang and The Blue Lotus provided thousands of young Europeans with their first taste of China.

"Hergé wished to defeat some of the clichés that were circulating among Europeans at that time," said Tintin publisher Jacques Simon.

Tintin and his dog Snowy made their first appearance in 1929 as a comic strip in Belgian newspaper Le Petit Vingtieme.

Hergé - whose real name was Georges Remi - launched Tintin into scores of adventures over the next 20 years.

Translation

Translating Tintin into Chinese has been an enormous task.

Tompson and Tompson have become Dubang and Dubang and Snowy is Baixue, but that was the easy part.

Tintin's friend Captain Haddock's salty swearing was a particularly tough job said Tintin translator Lu Xiao.

He added that the deliberately primitive language - often criticised as racist - of the Africans in Tintin in the Congo was simply untranslatable.