Books are once again a symbol of Chinese repression (and propaganda)

There are books, and then there are books. In China – that is, the country with which everyone wants to do business and which is increasingly treated as a perfectly normal, indeed very peaceful, rising power – the difference between the two categories can land you in prison. Last week, the China Writers Association – the Chinese writers’ association most deeply embedded in the political and cultural fabric of the People’s Republic of China – awarded the Lu Xun Prizes for Literature, considered the most prestigious in the country. Forget the Strega or the Goncourt: the selection of eligible works is, of course, guided by the Party, and the prize, which is awarded every four years, must be explicitly “guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Culture”. This year’s winners – and there are a great many of them, five in each category ranging from non-fiction to translation and reportage – have represented China primarily through rural, environmental and intimate short stories, whereas in previous years the economic resurgence and the glitz of the metropolises were celebrated far more: a shift that reflects the recent narrative promoted by the Chinese authorities. The work that has attracted the most international attention is "Flying Low", a collection of poems by Wang Jibing, who is now 56 but who, at the age of 49, began working as a home delivery driver, having previously worked as a construction labourer, a sand collector, a refuse collector and a street vendor. He has always written poems about his daily life – thousands of them – and then, in 2020, one of his poems – his most famous, "People in a Hurry" – ended up online and went viral.

It recounts a real-life incident, when, in order to deliver an order, he had to climb a total of 18 floors after being given two incorrect addresses, and when he finally found the customer, instead of a thank you, he was met with an insult, and the delay also cost him heavy penalties from the platform. Wang Jibing is similar to Hu Anyan, the author of "Consegno pacchi a Pechino" (published in Italian by Laterza): neither engages in propaganda, but both speak of China’s new economy, which Xi Jinping’s leadership has promised to reform. In practice, the social difficulties faced by the Chinese people can no longer be denied, and certain innocuous odes to normality serve to highlight the problems that the Party is ready to address as part of its ‘socialist modernisation’ project. According to the Global Times, works of this kind represent ‘China’s new cultural strategy, geared towards “people-centred” literature, the dissemination of cultural creation and the development of digital literature’.

Certainly, even in Hong Kong, in the independent bookshops – the few that remain open – there are books by Wang Jibing and Hu Anyan. But they are not the only ones. On the very same day that the Party – pardon me – the Chinese Writers’ Association presented its prestigious literary awards, and the Hong Kong Book Fair was being inaugurated, the national security police of the former British colony raided two independent bookshops – Have A Nice Stay and Greenfield Book Store – arresting five people (three women and two men) accused of selling or displaying publications with “seditious intent”. Officers seized dozens of boxes of books. Back in June, the managers of Hunter Bookstore had already been arrested, charged with sedition and money laundering over alleged links to foreign political funding and for organising events on sensitive topics. The iconic image of this latest book burning is that of a young woman being led away in handcuffs and escorted by officers, wearing a black T-shirt bearing the Chinese words: ‘I am a bookshop employee’. Among the books deemed illegally seditious by China’s thought police are “Let Only Red Flowers Bloom” by journalist Emily Feng, which explores new identities to resist Xi’s repression, and “The Troublemaker” by Mark Clifford, a biography of Jimmy Lai.