The Formation of Reading Communities: An Analysis of Bestsellers in Post-socialist China

Abstract

China’s publishing industry has undergone remarkable changes since the 1980s, when literature and politics in the PRC were united in their dismissal of market-driven literary production. The flourishing of the publishing industry as well as Internet literature in the past two decades further confirms this continued commercialization. In order to understand these tendencies and their influences in terms of literary production and consumption, this paper analyzes how bestsellers construct particular reading communities in China, and the way reading as a social activity is linked to sociological and historical questions. The discussion will center on the bestsellers of Chinese-language literary works in China between 2008 and 2012. Attention will be paid to the annual Top Ten Bestsellers book charts and to the monthly Top Ten Bestsellers book charts of non-fiction works and the latter’s strong connections to the cultural governance of the state. This paper focuses on the intricate relationship between bestsellers, cultural consciousness and the formation of reading community of Chinese classics in the new millennium. China’s print culture both conditions and facilitates social cohesion and the formation of a collective consciousness, which had been undermined by 30 years of the open-door policy (gaige kaifang 改革開放) advocated by Deng Xiaoping. The discussion will deal with both the function and significance of print culture in post-Socialist China, and the intricate relationship between cultural control and market economy under the rule of China’s Communist Party. The paper will first trace publication trends in post-Socialist China. It will then examine China’s bestseller business and its intricate relationship with Chinese government’s cultural policy. Some references will be made to guoxue 國學 (education in Chinese history and traditions) that exemplify the emerging roles of intellectuals and new cross-media collaborations. During the period under study, the data show a proliferation of books and introductions to classics that gradually gave way to studies and edited collections on the state party and party leaders. It seems as though, having forged a reading community by publishing classics, there is a ready audience for works of party policy. The discussion reaches the tentative conclusion that the rise and fall of bestsellers will continue to reflect government policy, and that print media will continue to be an instrument of ideological shaping or indoctrination.