WASHINGTON — Yu Miao smiles as he stands among the 10,000 books lined up on rows of bamboo shelves in his newly reopened bookstore. It’s located in Washington’s vibrant Dupont Circle neighborhood, far from its last location in Shanghai, where the Chinese government forced it out of business six years ago.
“There is no pressure from the authorities here,” said Yu, the owner JF booksWashington’s only Chinese bookseller. “I want to live without fear.”
Independent bookstores have become a new battleground in China, swept up by the ruling The Communist Party’s crackdown about dissenting opinions and free expression. The Associated Press found that at least a dozen bookstores in the world’s second-largest economy have closed or are on the verge of closing in recent months alone, straining the already tight space for press freedom. One bookstore owner was arrested more than four months ago.
The crackdown has had a chilling effect on China’s publishing industry. Bookstores are common in China, but many are state-owned. Independent bookstores are governed by a complex set of rules, with strict controls now in place aggressively controlledsaid bookstore owners. Printers and street vendors are also facing stricter government inspections by the National Bureau against Pornography and Illegal Publication.
The office did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press. China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to AP that it was not aware of the crackdown on bookstores.
Yu is not the only one taking his company out of the country. Chinese bookstores have popped up in Japan, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere in the US in recent years, a result of both tighter controls in China and growing Chinese communities abroad.
It’s not just the content of the books that has Chinese authorities wary. In many communities, bookstores are cultural centers where critical thinking is encouraged, and conversations can veer into politics and other topics not welcome by authorities.
The bookstore owner who was arrested was Yuan Di, also called Yanyou, the founder of Jiazazhi, an artistic bookstore in Shanghai and Ningbo on China’s east coast. He was taken away by police in June, said Zhou Youlieguo, who closed his own bookstore in Shanghai in September. Yuan’s arrest was also confirmed by two other people who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. The charges against Yuan are unclear.
An official from Ningbo’s Bureau of Culture, Radio Television and Tourism, which oversees bookstores, declined comment, noting that the matter is under investigation. Ningbo police did not respond to an interview request.
Michael Berry, director of UCLA’s Center for Chinese Studies, said a sluggish Chinese economy could prompt the government to exert more control.
“The government may feel that this is a time to be more careful and keep this kind of discourse in check when it comes to what people consume and read, to try to stem any unrest and nip it in the bud smother.” Berry said.
These bookstore owners face double pressure, Berry added. One of them is political oppression; the other is the global movement, especially among young people, towards digital media and away from print publications.
Wang Yingxing sold second-hand books in Ningbo for almost two decades before he was ordered closed in August. Local officials informed Wang that he did not have a publishing company license, even though he was not eligible to obtain one as a second-hand seller.
Faded outlines marked the spot where a sign for Fatty Wang’s Bookstore once hung. Black spray-painted letters on the bookstore window read: “Temporarily closed.”
“We promote culture, I’m not doing anything wrong, right? I’m just selling some books and promoting the culture,” Wang said as he tied a bundle of books together with a brown shawl and white nylon string.
“Then why don’t you leave me alone?” Wang added.
About half a dozen other people threw boxes of books into the back of a van. The books, Wang said, were sold to cafe and bar owners who wanted to polish small libraries for their customers. Some would be sent to a warehouse in Anhui. The rest, he said, should be sent to a recycling station to be pulverized and destroyed.
Bookstores are not the only target. Central authorities have also cracked down on other places, such as printing houses, internet bars, gaming halls and street vendors. According to Chinese authorities, strict inspections have taken place across the country.
Authorities in Shanghai inspected printers and bookstores, looking for “the printing, copying or selling of illegal publications,” according to a government document. This shows that the authorities are not only banning the sale of some publications, but are tracing this back to the printing process. They discovered that some printers were “not recording the copy contents as required” and demanded that they resolve the problem quickly.
In Shaoyang, a city in southern China, authorities said they will “deal with harmful publications in accordance with the law.”
The Communist Party has various powers to control what books are available. Any publication without a China Standard Book Number is considered illegal, including self-published books and books imported without special licenses. Books can be banned even after they are published if restrictions are later tightened – often for unclear reasons – or if the authors say something disturbing to Chinese authorities.
But despite these restrictions and the crackdown on existing booksellers, more and more bookstores are opening. Recent figures are not available, but a study by Bookdao, a media company that focuses on the book industry, shows that more than twice as many bookstores opened in China in 2020 than closed.
Liu Suli, who has run All Sages Books in Beijing for more than 30 years, says there are many idealists in the industry.
“Everyone who reads dreams of having a bookstore,” Liu says, despite the challenges.
In many cases, these dreams are fulfilled outside of China. Yu and other Chinese booksellers around the world have stocked their shelves with books from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, as well as locally published books.
Zhang Jieping, founder of Nowhere, a bookstore in Taiwan and Thailand, said there is a growing demand for books from migrants who left China after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“They don’t just want to be fluent in English or Japanese to fit in, they also want cultural autonomy,” says Zhang. “They want more community spaces. Not necessarily a bookstore, but in some form: a gallery or a restaurant.’
Li Yijia is a 22-year-old student who arrived in Washington from Beijing in August. One Sunday morning, she wandered through JF Books, where she found titles in Chinese and English. She said a Chinese bookstore feels like “another world in a bubble,” which helps her critical thinking by allowing her to read books in both languages.
“It also relieves homesickness, just like a Chinese restaurant,” Li added.
The closure of the bookstores is leading the owners down different paths. Some ended up in prison, some went looking for work to feed their families. Some began a journey to leave censorship behind.
Since closing his bookstore in Shanghai, 39-year-old Zhou has moved to Los Angeles, but he has not yet decided what his next step will be.
He said his fully licensed independent bookstore, which sold art books and self-published works by artists and translators, had been fined thousands of dollars and that he had been interrogated more than a dozen times in the past four years. He has seen colleagues jailed for selling ‘illegal publications’. All the self-published book artists and editors he worked with asked him to remove their work after warnings from local authorities.
Zhou said he could not handle further harassment. He said it was like he was “smuggling drugs instead of selling books.”
His bookstore’s existence, Zhou said, was “a rebellion and a resistance,” which is no more. ___
Associated Press writer Dake Kang in Ningbo, China, contributed to this report.