As China cracks down on bookstores at home, Chinese-language booksellers are flourishing oversea

FU TING

Yu Miao smiles as he stands among the 10,000 books crowded on rows of bamboo shelves in his newly reopened bookstore. It’s in Washington’s vibrant Dupont Circle neighborhood, far from its last location in Shanghai, where the Chinese government forced him out of business six years ago. “There is no pressure from the authorities here,” said Yu, the owner of JF Books, Washington’s only Chinese bookseller. “I want to live without fear.”

Independent bookstores have become a new battleground in China, swept up in the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on dissent and free expression. The Associated Press found that at least a dozen bookstores in the world’s second-largest economy have been shuttered or targeted for closure in the last few months alone, squeezing the already tight space for press freedom. One bookstore owner was arrested over 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 an intricate set of rules with strict controls now being more aggressively policed, according to bookstore owners. Printing shops and street vendors are also facing more rigorous government inspections by the National Office Against Pornography and Illegal Publication.

The office did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement to AP, said it was not aware of a crackdown on bookstores.

Yu isn’t alone in taking his business out of the country. Chinese bookstores have popped up in Japan, France, Netherlands and elsewhere in the U.S. in recent years, as a result of both stricter controls in China and growing Chinese communities abroad.

It’s not just the books’ contents that are making 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 welcomed by the 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 eastern coast. He was taken away by police in June, according to 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 retribution. The charge against Yuan is unclear.

An official in Ningbo’s Bureau of Culture, Radio Television and Tourism, which oversees bookstores, declined comment, noting the case is under investigation. The Ningbo police didn’t respond to an interview request. Michael Berry, director of UCLA’s Center for Chinese Studies, said a sluggish Chinese economy may be driving the government to exert greater control.

“The government might be feeling that this is a time to be more cautious and control this kind of discourse in terms of what people are consuming and reading to try to put a damper on any potential unrest and kind of nip it in the bud,” Berry said.

These bookstore owners face dual pressures, Berry added. One is the political clampdown; the other is the global movement, especially among young people, toward digital media and away from print publications.

Wang Yingxing sold secondhand books in Ningbo for almost two decades before being ordered to close in August. Local officials informed Wang he lacked a publication business license even though he wasn’t eligible to obtain one as a second-hand seller.

Faded outlines marked the spot where a sign for Fatty Wang’s Bookstore once hung. Spray-painted black letters on the bookstore’s window read: “Temporarily closed”. “We’re promoting culture, I’m not doing anything wrong, right? I’m just selling some books and promoting culture,” Wang said, tying a bundle of books together with brown wrapper and white nylon string.

“Then why won’t you leave me alone?” Wang added. Half a dozen other people heaved boxes of books into the back of a van. The books, Wang said, were being sold to cafe and bar owners who wanted to burnish little libraries for their patrons. Some would be sent to a warehouse in Anhui. The rest, he said, were to be sent to a recycling station to be pulped and destroyed.

Bookstores are not the only target. Central authorities have also cracked down on other places such as printing shops, internet bars, gaming rooms and street vendors. Strict inspections have taken place all over the country, according to Chinese authorities.

Authorities in Shanghai inspected printing places and bookstores, looking for “printing, copying or selling illegal publications,” according to a government document. This shows the authorities are not just barring the sale of some publications, but tracing them back to the printing process. They found some printing stores did not “register the copy content as required” and demanded they fix the problem quickly.