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The Good Book and the Good Life: Bestselling Biographies in China's Economic Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2009

Emily Chua Huiching
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Abstract

This article looks at currently bestselling biographies in urban China as popular histories of the national self from 1949 to the present. In their retrospective narrations of the Cultural Revolution and economic reform, they identify a reorientation of life away from ideological community and towards market rationality. I locate this shift also in the history of the publishing industry that produces them and analyse how publishing practices and values have changed from Mao to Jiang, to argue that a reconstitution of the “good” has been effected by the deployment of old rhetorical goals under structurally new conditions. Extended into the broader political arena, this suggests that institutional continuity in contemporary China masks a reconstitution of governance itself, from direct intervention and political control to administrative regulation and commercial competitiveness. Communist revolutionary ambitions are now redefined and fulfilled through economic success in commercial enterprise. Contrary to the prevalent notion that such couplings are contradictory and unsustainable, I argue that a mutually generative relationship currently exists between the two.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 198 , June 2009 , pp. 364 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2009

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References

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4 Shuyu Kong, Consuming Literature, pp. 94 and 99. Kong's analysis depicts the Chinese publishing system as a faulty version of the Western ideal, but one that is fortunately making slow but steady progress towards becoming more like it. “Certainly, further changes are required before China has a truly market-based publishing system free from government interference, but the cracks in the old system are becoming more and more noticeable. In this respect, the second channel has served as a catalyst for reform, quietly but steadily undermining the foundations of the socialist publishing system.”

5 Link, The Uses of Literature, pp. 4 and 323.

6 Ibid. p. 325.

7 Ibid. pp. 301–18. Link takes his definition of “use” from the American pragmatists Charles Peirce and William James (p. 285 n. 4).

8 Ibid. p. 330. The limitations of Link's functional analysis are reflected in his concluding summation of his own project: “But Rawls stops here; he ventures no further toward explication of the elusive aspects of value, and I, too, shall desist. A final account of aesthetic value is not (I am relieved to note) the purpose of this book, and in any case the point we have now reached seems to me adequate for handling nearly all the cases that we encounter within the socialist Chinese literary system.”

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14 They need only pay one manuscript fee, typesetting fee and government per title publishing tax. Ze, David Wei, “China,” in Altbach, Philip G. and Hoshinopp, Edith S. (eds.), International Book Publishing: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1995), pp. 452–56Google Scholar; Shi, Ying, “Shangye luoji, wenhua luoji yu zhuanxing luoji” (“Business logic, cultural logic and transitional logic”), Chubanren (Publishers), Vol. 16 (2005), p. 34Google Scholar.

15 For a comprehensive study of the bestseller phenomenon, see Shuyu Kong, Consuming Literature, pp. 37–64. She finds the “sudden discovery” that books could be sold for profit made it “the overarching goal [for most publishers] to release a best seller,” such that “one could almost describe the 1990s in China as the decade of the best seller,” p. 4.

16 Sales records were aggregated from the China Cities Book Sales Chart (Zhongguo chengshi tushu xiaoshou paihangbang) and the Beijing News (Xinjingbao) book sales charts, both of which combine sales statistics from all major bookshops in each city; from rating charts in publishing industry journals, China Publishing Report (Zhongguo tushu shangbao) and Wide View on Publishing (Chuban guangjiao); and from the rating charts of online bookstores Sinja Reading Channel (Xinlangwang dushu pindao) and Dang Dang Books (Dangdangwang tushu).

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21 Info on Lenovo – purchase of IBM, publicly listed and valued at what?

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23 Ibid. pp. 7 and 110.

24 Jiang, Yang, Womensa (Us Three) (Beijing: Shenghuo dushu xinzhi sanlian shudian, 2003)Google Scholar.

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26 Ibid. pp. 179–80 and 192.

27 Kuhn, Robert, Ta gaibianle Zhongguo: Jiang Zemin zhuan (The Man who Changed China: Jiang Zemin), (Shanghai: Shanghai yiwen chubanshe, 2006), p. 469Google Scholar.

28 Ibid. pp. 458 and 460.

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30 Yao Ming, My World, My Dream, p. 37.

31 See especially Yang Jiang, Us Three, p. 136 and Wang Meng, Unpresentable Memories, pp. 8–11 and 31–37, on their commitment to literary work; Wang Meng, Unpresentable Memories, pp. 3–4 and 235–37, on protecting intellectuals; Yang Jiang, Us Three, p. 136 and Wang Meng, Unpresentable Memories, p. 3, on the Cultural Revolution as tempest and typhoon.

32 Liu Yangdong, Gold Letters on a Red Base, p. 190.

33 Kuhn, The Man who Changed China, p. 313.

34 Ibid. p. 467; Wang Meng, Unpresentable Memories, p. 246.

35 Yao Ming, My World, My Dream, p. 243.

36 Ling Zhijun, The Legend of Lenovo, pp. 284–85.

37 Wang Meng, Unpresentable Memories, p. 164.

38 Mao Zedong's speech at the first national Xinhua Bookstore publishing work meeting, 3 October 1949. Recorded in Shifeng, Liugao (ed.), Xinzhongguo chuban wushinian jishi (Fifty Years of Publishing in China) (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1999), p. 3Google Scholar.

39 Nunn, G. Raymond, Publishing in Mainland China (Boston: The MIT Press, 1966), p. 16Google Scholar; For a comprehensive study of publishing work during the Mao era, see Link, Perry, The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

40 Nunn, Publishing in Mainland China, pp. 22–26.

41 Wei, “China,” pp. 449 and 450–53. The General Administration of Publishing was reconstituted as the National Publishing Administration in the 1970s–1980s, and again as the General Administration of Press and Publication from the late 1980s up to the present.

42 McDougall, Bonnie S., “Writers and performers, their works, and their audiences in the first three decades,” in McDougall, Bonnie S. (ed.), Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 1984), p. 271Google Scholar.

43 Liugao Shifeng, Fifty Years, pp. 20, 43 and 75. The four categories were: works by Marx, Engels Lenin and Mao, and important state and Party documents; works of high quality and important content that have already been approved; works that are basically good but with partial flaws; works of mistaken content, the sale of which has been officially halted.

44 See Perry Link's compelling portrait of the bedrock assumption on which everyone in the Chinese literary system “agreed almost unanimously, [namely] that literature is relevant, or even essential, to morality, social life, and politics at every level from the policy making of the highest leadership to the daily life of the average reader.” Link, The Uses of Literature, p. 5.

45 Mao's written response to an industry report in 1955. Recorded in Liugao Shifeng, Fifty Years, p. 42.

46 Ibid. p. 71.

47 Shuyu Kong, Consuming Literature, pp. 37–39.

48 Deng Xiaoping' speech at a CCP meeting on science and education work, 8 August 1977. Recorded in Liugao Shifeng, Fifty Years, p. 166.

49 State Council's message approving the National Publication Administration's report on strengthening and improving publishing work, 18 July 1978. Recorded in Liugao Shifeng, Fifty Years, p. 175.

50 Ian McGowan, “Book publishing in China,” in Baensch, The Publishing Industry in China, p. 56.

51 Ming, Yu, Zhongguo chubanye zhuangkuang ji yuce: zhongguo chuban lanpishu 2003–2004 (Present Status and Predictions of China Publishing Industry 2003–2004) (Zhongguo shuji chubanshe, 2004), p. 8Google Scholar; Li Zi, “New chapter for Chinese publishing,” http://www.bjreview.com.cn/En-2005/05-09-e/09-china-1.htm (accessed 1 May 2006); Jia Heping, “Bold media reform approaching,” http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/12/content_347661.htm, July 12, 2004 (accessed 1 May 2006).

52 Sun Qingguo, “Economics,” pp. 121–22; also see n. 15.

53 McGowan, “Book publishing,” p. 53; Hai Mo, “Haoshu shi ‘zuo’ chulaide – yige duli chubanren de shangwu biji” (“Good books are ‘made’ – the business diary of an independent publisher”), Chuban guangjiao (Wide View on Publishing), Vol. 106 (2005), p. 15; Wei, “China,” p. 452; Yu Ming, Present Status and Predictions, p. 3. For an extensive set of statistics on the current publishing industry in China, see Guangwei, Xin, Publishing in China: An Essential Guide (Singapore: Thompson, 2004)Google Scholar.

54 Xin Guangwei, Publishing in China, p. 18.

55 The GAPP Book Department, China Book Publishing: The First Official Industry Report (Singapore: Thomson and China Renmin University Press, 2008), p. 90Google Scholar. See also policies, conferences and training programmes documented in Liugao Shifeng, Fifty Years, notable examples on pp. 220 and 227.

56 Shuyu Kong, Consuming Literature, pp. 40–41; Jia Heping, “Bold media reform.” Prices ranged from 10,000 to 50,000 CNY depending on the state-owned publisher's reputation and anticipated sales volume.

57 Jia Heping, “Bold media reform”; McGowan, “Book publishing,” p. 5. McGowan finds the GAPP “prevents deviation. (Strictly speaking, there is no censorship.)”

58 The GAPP, China Book Publishing, p. 12.

59 For documentation of these proceedings, see Liugao Shifeng, Fifty Years, notable examples on pp. 224 and 278.

60 Ibid. p. 191; Jiang Zemin's speech, cited in http://www.booktide.com/news/20000612/200006120151.html (accessed 2 June 2008). Perry Link finds another crystallization of liberalizing change coupled with the continuity of what he calls “Maoist assumptions” in Hu Yaobang's 1985 speech on literary policy: “Our Party has always stressed the importance of the functions of literature and art within the overall revolutionary enterprise. On this point we have not changed for decades. During the Yan'an years, Comrade Mao Zedong said that our literature and art were weapons with which to unite and to educate the people.” Link, The Uses of Literature, p. 284.

61 Zhenwei, Huang (ed.), Zhongguo bianji chuabanshi (A History of Editing and Publishing in China) (Suzhou: Suzhou University Press, 2003), p. 1Google Scholar.

62 Hai Mo, “Good books are ‘made’,” p. 15.

63 The GAPP, China Book Publishing, pp. 70–77.

64 Li Zi, “New chapter”; “Books in China” in Major Market Profiles from Euromonitor International, http://www.majormarketprofiles.com/report_summary.asp?docid=28642 (accessed 1 May 2006); “China Publishing Group,” http://www.cnpubg.com/eng/index.jsp (accessed 15 August 2007).

65 The GAPP, China Book Publishing, p. 84.

66 “Zhongguo chuban jituan gongsi gaige fazhan qude mingxian chengguo” (“CPG Corporation achieves notable results from reform”), Renmin ribao (People's Daily), 23 November 2005.

67 Li Zi, “New chapter”; The GAPP, China Book Publishing, p. 90.

68 “China Publishing Group,” http://www.cnpubg.com/eng/index.jsp (accessed 15 August 2007).

69 Ibid.