Readers matter. Reading matters to readers. And to be able to read, future readers have to gain literacy. Literary studies have taught us that texts only come into being and gain meaning when they are read by actual people. Yet, actual readers are ephemeral to researchers. While concrete readings may be crucial to them, even life-transforming, most reading acts go undocumented for posterity and, thus, for the historian. Nonetheless, in her Beyond Citizenship, Di Luo is undertaking the seemingly impossible: she is tracing how the acquisition of literacy transformed the lives of many ordinary people in the first half of the 20th century in China, how various governments had their stakes in this project, and how readers were transformed, yet not necessarily in the ways the respective governments had anticipated. Based on large amounts of archival sources, reports in contemporary newspapers and books which are brought into a fruitful dialogue with extant scholarly literature, Di Luo has written a very readable social history of the early 20th century. She provides her readers not only with an overview of the policies and their repercussions at the grassroots level, but also with many stories of actual readers and how reading impacted on their lives.
The focus of the book is on literacy campaigns undertaken by both the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) targeting adult learners. Through this, Di Luo convincingly dismantles the “nation-building/modernization narrative”: since the late 19th century, this narrative had gained traction when reformists established a distinct correlation between the strength of a country and its levels of literacy and schooling – notwithstanding practical issues such as how to measure literacy. Literacy thus became a marker of modernization, not only for the individual, but for the entire country. This narrative reconfigured relations in Chinese society which were still dominated by Confucian values honouring the older generations: the young became “school-age children” and the hope for the future vis-à-vis “unschooled elders,” who were thus seen as hindering the modernization and prosperity of the country. Educators and politicians in both parties subscribed to the nation-building/modernization narrative and sought to employ it for their respective political agendas, even when they did not have clear standards for assessing and measuring literacy. Does it suffice if a person knows a few characters, and, if so, which ones? Does it suffice if a person attended a number of classes, and, if so, how many?
Di Luo's analysis dismantles these challenges inscribed into the nation-building/modernization narrative and argues beyond citizenship: for individuals, being literate may have been less about being part of the nation than about everyday matters and their position as individuals within their immediate social group. Citizens had an incentive to learn how to read and write when this would help them in practical, legal or economic matters. Likewise, they could consciously choose to be (or at least pose as) illiterate when this would mean exemption from criminal prosecution. To would-be-readers, immediate social relations were more important than larger political and ideological aims. In 1920s Guangzhou under KMT rule, for example, attendance of literacy classes improved only when English classes became part of the curriculum, addressing the career aspirations of the factory workers for whom these classes were intended. Literacy thus turned out to be a tool for empowerment of the ordinary citizen, but not necessarily along the lines of those who devised and implemented literacy policies and programmes. The comparative success of the CCP's literacy campaigns in Northern Shaanxi rested on the fact that it managed to reconcile the interests of the state with those of the individual: “[T]he relationship between strengthening the state (vis-à-vis local society) and strengthening the personal (vis-à-vis other members of society) was compatible, not contradictory” (p. 249).
The introduction of the book presents the conceptual framework of literacy, identity and its relationship to politics in China from 1900 to 1945. Chapter one is devoted to a discussion of the implications of the “nation-building/modernization narrative” ending on how this narrative intersects with daily practices. The following four chapters take their readers chronologically through the first half of the 20th century, putting centre stage key literacy campaigns of the KMT and the CCP. Chapter two presents campaigns by the KMT in Shanghai (1924) and in Guangzhou (1924–1926). Chapter three contrasts nationalist and communist literacy efforts during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Chapter four focuses on literacy efforts in wartime Chongqing and contrasts these with those in Hengshan, which was closer to the front, illuminating the multidimensionality of the social impact of these efforts: being a teacher and training both children and adults in literacy was as much a way of earning one's livelihood as it was about one's identity, despite the limited success of adult literacy programmes. Chapter five demonstrates how from 1937–1945 the CCP in Shaanxi was relatively more successful than the KMT. While the overall success of the village winter schools still was limited, the exemplary cases that made it into the record demonstrate that for villagers becoming literate was not necessarily about becoming modern citizens, but more about redefining their relationship within their community. Moreover, these recorded cases of successful winter schools created a new narrative that would be relevant as it made its way through the political administration.
The book addresses scholars of 20th-century China and will be of interest to colleagues and students in cultural studies, book studies as well as intellectual history. Beyond Citizenship thus forms part of a growing body of literature that puts readers centre stage, demonstrating the impact of reading on individuals as well as on their larger social contexts, such as The Cultural Sociology of Reading (Thumala Olave [ed.], Palgrave, 2022), The Edinburgh History of Reading (Jonathan Rose [ed.], Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and the work of Joan Judge therein (“In search of the Chinese common reader: vernacular knowledge in an age of new media”). Written in a very accessible style, with concise summaries at the end of all chapters and a conclusion wrapping up the main points of the argument, the book, or its individual chapters, can easily be assigned as classroom reading.
