China | Chaguan Xi Jinping wants China to read more—as long as it’s the right books A new campaign to put down phones and pick up classics Apr 27th 2026|5 min read THE BINHAI library, often called China’s most beautiful, is** breathtaking**. *Swirling shelves* of books rise in gravity-defying stacks to a high ceiling in a light-dappled room: a modern cathedral to learning. No wonder the library, in Tianjin, an eastern city, has become a favourite photo stop for glammed-up young folk posting to social media. But it does not take long in the library to see that there is less to it than meets the eye. Most of the books are just pictures of spines glued to the wall. And most of the visitors are glued to their phones, not perusing books. It is the perfect backdrop not just for photos but also for one of China’s new official obsessions: how to get people to read more, and to read more deeply. Since its founding in 1921, China’s Communist Party has treated literacy as a core objective. For Mao Zedong, briefly a librarian before becoming a revolutionary, the motivation was not bookish: he wanted to build a proletariat conscious enough to overthrow its feudal overlords. Yet literacy campaigners can appreciate his results. He helped propel China from a literacy rate of less than 20% in 1949 to about 60% at his death in 1976. It is approaching 99% today. Xi Jinping has revived the cause, with a twist. In February a new regulation that aims to promote reading came into effect. On April 26th the country concluded its first-ever national reading week. State media are full of discussions about how to get people to put down their phones and pick up a book. And Mr Xi has given it his imprimatur. In the latest issue of Qiushi, the party’s leading theoretical journal, he pronounced on the value of reading and quoted a line attributed to Mao: “One can go a day without eating, a day without sleeping, but not a day without reading.” Part of this is China’s response to a problem common everywhere. Chinese adults read on average 4.8 physical books a year, according to a national survey. Similar surveys have put American adults at about 13 books a year. Scepticism of that American figure is warranted, but Chinese reading of physical tomes is clearly down. On trains, planes and metros, it is rare to see anyone with a paperback. People do still look at text, just mostly on their phones. Wu Shulin of the Publishers Association of China has said online reading is time-killing, not knowledge-building—a gripe familiar to teachers and parents anywhere. What makes **the reading campaign **unique to China is how it reveals two of Mr Xi’s preoccupations. The first is techno-nationalism, a belief that China’s future depends on mastery of the industries of tomorrow. In a widely circulated essay, Cui Haijiao of the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication argues that deep reading breeds innovation. Mr Xi himself has called for reading the classics to grasp why things are as they are. (For the most part China’s culture vultures encourage international fare, and want everything from Tang poetry to Twain and Tolstoy appreciated.) The second is Mr Xi’s veneration of Chinese tradition, in which reading is central to what it means to be Chinese. There is indeed much history to this. “In books there are houses made of gold,” reads a famous poem attributed to an emperor of a thousand years ago. Mr Xi wants China to become a “cultural powerhouse” by 2035, and the revival of reading is one of its pillars. How, then, to do it? Here, good intentions meet practical limits. The party knows it cannot simply force people to read. The new regulation is largely about fostering conditions that would encourage more reading. It urges officials to build better public reading spaces, for instance. Yet it is easy enough to imagine cadres, ever glad of an excuse to pour concrete, putting up libraries and then losing interest. The Binhai library is a case in point: the newspaper-reading room offers a meagre selection, and by late afternoon had yet even to stock that day’s papers. The regulation gestures at supporting bricks-and-mortar bookshops, but does little. One shop owner laments the absence of bolder measures, such as Japan’s fixed-price system, which prevents online discounting. China’s marginalia Any discussion of reading must also consider what is being read. The new regulation calls for the reading of more “good” books. At a recent book fair in Tianjin, many stalls were devoted to Chinese medicine, children’s gadgets and craft jewellery rather than to books. One stall manager said people just do not want to pay to read when there is so much online for free. Indeed, some of China’s most original literature in recent decades has appeared online. Outsiders may assume that this reflects political censorship. Certainly, books critical of the party or unorthodox on history are blocked from print. Some officials have learned to their personal cost the danger of such fare: reading literature containing “serious political problems” has been cited as a reason in multiple purges in recent years. But more readers are almost certainly affected by crackdowns on unapproved, highly popular genres, especially danmei books, which depict male same-sex romance, and supernatural fiction. “If you want to publish in print, you have to cut or change things,” says a bookseller. Another trend has been the rise of independent Chinese bookshops outside China. Jifeng, a liberal one, was forced to close in Shanghai in 2018 and reopened in Washington, DC, in 2024. Causeway Bay Books, known for political contraband, moved from Hong Kong to Taipei in 2020 after five of its employees were arrested. Mainland intellectuals have also opened small independent bookshops in Tokyo, Chiang Mai, Amsterdam and beyond. So, taking a wider lens, Chinese literature is in decent shape, though much of it is now online or published abroad.** Absent from the new campaign are the things that would make it a truly valuable exercise: open publishing, diverse formats, intellectual risk. The party wants people to read more, but not widely**. ■ 這篇文章標題為《中國的邊際註記》（China’s marginalia），詳細探討了中國當前的閱讀推廣運動及其背後的政治與社會意涵。以下為全文逐字翻譯： 濱海圖書館經常被譽為「中國最美圖書館」，其景象令人屏息。旋轉的書架在光影斑駁的空間內，以挑戰重力的堆疊方式延伸至高聳的天花板：這是一座現代的學習大教堂。難怪這座位於東部城市天津的圖書館，會成為盛裝打扮的年輕人向社群媒體發文的熱門拍照景點。但只要在館內待上一會兒，就會發現這裡表裡不一。大多數的「書」只是貼在牆上的書脊照片。而大多數的訪客則緊盯著手機，而非翻閱書籍。 這不僅是拍照的絕佳背景，也反映了中國官方的新執念之一：如何讓民眾讀得更多、讀得更深。自1921年成立以來，中國共產黨一直將提升識字率視為核心目標。對於在成為革命家之前曾短暫擔任圖書館管理員的毛澤東而言，這種動力並非出於書卷氣：他想要建立一個具有足夠意識、足以推翻封建領主的無產階級。然而，識字運動的推動者會讚賞他的成果。他幫助中國的識字率從1949年的不到20%，提升到1976年他逝世時的約60%。時至今日，這一數字已接近99%。 習近平重啟了這項事業，並賦予了新的轉向。今年二月，一項旨在促進閱讀的新條例正式生效。4月26日，中國結束了首屆「全民閱讀週」。官方媒體充斥著關於如何讓民眾放下手機、拿起書本的討論。而習近平也給予了此舉認可。在黨內權威理論刊物《求是》的最新一期中，他論述了閱讀的價值，並引用了一句據傳出自毛澤東的名言：「飯可以一日不吃，覺可以一日不睡，書不可以一日不讀。」 這部分是中國針對全球普遍存在之問題所作出的回應。根據一項全國性調查，中國成年人平均每年閱讀4.8本實體書。類似的調查顯示美國成年人約為13本。雖然對美國的數據持懷疑態度是有理由的，但中國實體書閱讀量的下滑顯而易見。在火車、飛機和地鐵上，很少看到有人拿著平裝書。人們依然在閱讀文字，只是大多是在手機上。中國出版協會的鄔書林曾表示，網路上閱讀是在「消磨時間」，而非「建立知識」——這是任何地方的老師和家長都熟悉的抱怨。 使這場閱讀運動具有中國特色的是，它揭示了習近平的兩個關注點。第一是「技術民族主義」，即相信中國的未來取決於對明日產業的掌握。在一篇廣為流傳的文章中，中國新聞出版研究院的崔海教論證了深度閱讀能孕育創新。習近平本人也呼籲閱讀經典，以掌握事物運作的底層邏輯。（在大多數情況下，中國的文化推手鼓勵國際化的內容，希望人們能欣賞從唐詩到馬克吐溫及托爾斯泰的作品。） 第二是習近平對中國傳統的推崇，而在這套傳統中，閱讀是定義「何謂中國人」的核心。這確實有深遠的歷史背景。「書中自有黃金屋」是一首據傳出自千年前皇帝的名詩。習近平希望中國在2035年前成為「文化強國」，而振興閱讀正是其中的支柱之一。 那麼，該如何達成？在此，良好的意圖遇到了現實的限制。共產黨知道它不能單純強迫民眾閱讀。新條例主要在於營造鼓勵更多閱讀的環境，例如敦促官員建設更好的公共閱讀空間。然而，不難想像那些總是以灌溉混凝土為樂的基層幹部，在蓋好圖書館後便失去興趣。濱海圖
