Why "there are no good books in Jianzhong"?

There are basically no good books in contemporary China.

This comment is unavoidable, and even insulting, but it seems that there is no more truthful and less insulting statement that can summarize the current situation of China's publishing industry.

Let’s first look at a set of comparative figures for the publishing industry revenue of the world’s top five economies in 2019: the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom:

Annual income of the publishing industry (US$100 million): US 259.30, China 145.96, Japan 141.97, Germany 104.08, UK 80.52;

Publishing industry revenue as a percentage of GDP: 0.12% in the US, 0.10% in China, 0.28% in Japan, 0.27% in Germany, and 0.29% in the UK.

(Source of data in China: 2019 Press and Publishing Industry Analysis Report (Abstract)” by the National Press and Publication Administration . The annual income of the publishing industry is calculated as follows: the operating income of the press and publishing industry is 1,889.61 billion yuan, or 273.8 billion U.S. dollars, of which book publishing revenue accounts for 5.24%, and electronic publication publishing revenue accounted for 0.09%, totaling US$14.596 billion. Data source for other countries: "China Publishing and Media Business Daily" article )

It can be seen from the data that although China was the world's second largest economy and the largest population country at that time, the Chinese did not like to buy books very much. Fortunately, Americans who are generally recognized as anti-intellectual and uneducated are only a little better than us. . Since not wanting to buy books has not prevented the United States from becoming the world leader, nor has it prevented us from surpassing Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom in terms of GDP, then we can rest assured that we don’t have to take the fact that we don’t like to buy books too much.

Is that so? At least the Chinese government is not so optimistic, and has often accused the United States of engaging in "cultural hegemony"; everyone knows how many American cultural products each year that Chinese people with a certain level of education have read or consumed for nothing; think about it carefully, the scale of the American book industry The advantages are overwhelming, as well as "National Geographic", Hollywood movies, Broadway plays, pop music... Which cultural field does not have products of the level of "cultural hegemony"? Comparing all these fields, which one is cheaper to create than the book publishing industry? If you really try to compete with the United States culturally, as a catch-up, it is better to engage in the publishing industry honestly. After all, the Japanese came from behind by drawing manga.

According to this line of thinking, China's online literature field seems to be viewed with optimism. Among China's 1.4 billion people, there are 450 million online readers, and English-translated online paper books are also sold to the United States. As long as the normal development continues, not to mention the "cultural hegemony" with the United States, it is expected to be stable and stable. Japan is firmly established as the world's third largest country.

However, in the development of online texts, or all graphic products in China, there are many problems that cannot be clearly explained but are clear at a glance.

First, there is almost no copyright protection for graphic works in China.

Leaving aside the fact that only 50,000 copies are sold, it is considered a best-seller in the paper book industry. On the surface, paid web sites like Jinjiang seem to be doing quite well. As long as some of the 450 million web readers are willing to pay, the prospects should be quite optimistic. However, the data is right in front of us: In 2019, the revenue of Jinjiang Literature Network was 830 million . This income was apportioned among the 34 million registered users of Jinjiang in the same year, which is roughly equivalent to the price each person paid for a paper book; needless to say, those who paid this money must have read more than one book. However, this figure, which is far from being comparable to countries with complete copyright protection, seems to be the ideal result that can be obtained in China, where piracy is extremely common.

It is normal in China for creators to read pirated texts and animations, editors in publishing houses to read pirated books, and screenwriters in the film and television industry to read pirated TV series. Even practitioners are like this, and naturally there is no reason to blame readers and audiences. People who should be consumers of cultural products often do not pay for the works they watch, but only pay for a small part of them, and only pay for those who have to pay.

It's not a lack of quality, or even a lack of money. As long as people can easily obtain the products of other people's labor for free without being held accountable, then the people who choose to do so will naturally be the majority. And once the majority do so, there is no moral burden to do so. Therefore, in order to change this situation, whether relying on self-monitoring by consumers or relying on authors to intercede with consumers, it is useless. The only thing that is useful is that the state forces strictly enforce the copyright protection law and treat piracy as theft.

Why doesn't the country catch piracy? The answer is simple: the cost of catching piracy is the same as the cost of maintaining stability audits, both of which require manual auditors, monitoring the printing industry, etc. What about piracy of content such as online articles that maintain stability and have a large volume? Someday there will be some large-scale public opinion, or a surprise rectification when preparing for the anti-pornography campaign will be fine. When piracy enters the stage of "the law does not blame the public", the deterrent effect of the law is useless.

So, what are the consequences of not protecting copyright? If a creative industry cannot make money by itself, then naturally there will be no talents in this industry, and it will not be able to cultivate talents, so naturally there will be no good ideas; if this creative industry can only make money by selling products, For example, IP adaptation and click drainage that people talk about are not producing products, but advertising for other products; if the creative industry produces only disguised advertisements, then viewers will naturally They are not willing to pay for it, but turn to pirated foreign cultural products that are of high quality, have not been reviewed, and do not cost money; if foreign cultural products are pirated as soon as they enter the Chinese market, what will be deleted and added, Producers and consumers have even less incentive to pay for it.

In this cycle, the industry is naturally full of creative garbage. It's not that you can't find good things out of the garbage mountain, but even if you find a lot of good things in a crooked way, it doesn't affect the fact that the garbage mountain is still a garbage mountain.

Some people may ask: good books are not necessarily good sellers, but there are always some fictional or non-fictional books that are not best-selling but of high quality are also published, right? This kind of book is also dug out of the garbage mountain. The "high-quality" books that can be seen on the market that are definitely not profitable are either self-funded or supported by state funds, that is, someone pays the bill, but not the person who buys the book. Because China does not have book awards with social influence, publishers do not have the high profits provided by bestsellers to support good books that cannot be sold, and Chinese book writers—it is really inconvenient to call them writers in general—have no social influence Power and the means of transforming social influence into economic income (such as giving speeches and making audio-visual programs)-in a word, if there is money to be made, or word of mouth, nothing, then it is not a career, but a hobby.

Speaking of hobbies, what about the fan works of "Generating Power for Love", don't they also exist in other countries, isn't it fun in the circle? Among other things, in countries with complete copyright protection, it is easy for top fanwork authors to go commercial and create more and better works. The whole system encourages rather than inhibits popular authors to make more money . There are countless cartoonists of doujinshi origin in Japan, and even the United States has such masterpieces as "Fifty Shades of Grey". In China, all self-printed and sold fan works are actually guilty of illegal business operations, not to mention the situation where the content violates the red line of pornography. The consequences are much more serious than providing pirated copies.

Now that we are talking about the red line, we can move on to the second point.

Second, Chinese graphic works and even literary and artistic works are not graded, and it is impossible to grade them. Because grading and review are closely related, and review must never give standards, but must be resolutely implemented.

Anyone who has consumed a certain cultural product in China—sometimes pirated copies—must have had a question: It’s not that it can’t be censored, but can there be a standard? Even if it is revised every year or even every month. There is no standard, what can be done yesterday cannot be done today, what A can do can’t be done by B, and what can be done with low traffic volume can’t be done when the traffic volume is high... How can this thing be done?

There is a very simple answer to this question: If you ask me for standards and a list of illegal vocabulary, then there is none. I gave it to you today, and it will be published on foreign media tomorrow. Is that okay?

The thing is that simple: In order not to surprise the Allies, we must not clarify the review criteria. As for how many difficulties you will encounter when producing cultural products, it is because you have a problem with your thinking. If you have the same heart as the boss, isn't the red line equivalent to non-existence?

Because in materialist China, the censorship standards are idealistic, so the following things can be done: in principle, no one in the mainland is allowed to post videos on YouTube, but if you attract people on YouTube through China’s antique rural life With a large number of foreign followers, CCTV will praise you for " highlighting the positive effect of cultural dissemination to the outside world ".

Coincidentally, the same CCTV article also praised the drama "Chen Qing Ling" (the famous work of the famous artist Xiao Zhan), which was also praised by the same CCTV article. The online store salesperson has produced and sold more than 4,000 volumes of two categories of obscene books and periodicals ”, and was imprisoned a few months before the article was published.

This led to a dramatic scene: the English book, which was officially published after the author was imprisoned, was exporting Chinese culture in American hypermarkets; while the domestic online platform where she first published articles, it was all her works. It is locked and access is prohibited, and it is explained that it is "due to force majeure such as national policies and regulations". The Chinese culture contained in her works is vulgar and obscene in China, but positive and advanced abroad. If we have to forcefully explain this phenomenon, it is probably because the moral values of Chinese people are indeed ahead of the world. The vulgar culture that we despise is suitable for foreigners who are full of vulgar things.

So those who count on grading can rest. The grading of cultural products is tantamount to acknowledging that people of a certain age have sexual desires, desires for violence, desires to read ghost stories... In short, all kinds of "vulgar" desires that are not in harmony with public order and good customs, and these desires are satisfied by viewing cultural products It is worthy of recognition. However, the superiors did not admit that the Chinese should have these vulgar desires, so how can they be satisfied? You want to see sex, why don't you get married? You don't want to get married, so why read sexual descriptions? As for bears eating people, ghosts scaring people, homosexuality, fantasy reasoning/serial murders in which middle school students can kill people by writing their names in their notebooks...they are all the same.

So in China, in fact, there is only one kind of cultural product that is the safest and best-selling, and that is the cultural product created by Xi Jinping. This brings us to the third point.

Third, China's biggest best-selling author is none other than Xi Jinping himself.

How much Xi Jinping's book has sold, the official has provided the data. Citing the "2019 Press and Publishing Industry Analysis Report (Abstract)" of the National Press and Publication Administration : "Among the top 10 books, periodicals, and comprehensive newspapers ranked in the top 10 annual prints and average prints of a single species, theme books, mainstream newspapers and periodicals Accounted for the majority. "Xi Jinping's New Era Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Study Outline" exceeded 78 million copies, "Excerpts from Xi Jinping's Exposition on "Don't Forget the Original Mind and Keep in Mind the Mission"" reached 47 million copies, "The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Upholding and Improving Socialism with Chinese Characteristics "Decisions on Several Major Issues Concerning the Modernization of the National Governance System and Governance Capabilities" and its study guide books exceeded 6.1 million volumes, and "New China's Development Face-to-Face - Theoretical Hotspots Face-to-Face · 2019" nearly 5.4 million volumes."

In contrast to the above situation, "Mr. Toad Goes to a Psychiatrist", which was published in 2020 and ranked first in China's non-fiction book rankings in 2021 , only sold 3 million copies in two years . Of course, this is already Miraculously good grades. And which book is the number one book in China's non-fiction book rankings in 2019 ? "Xi Jinping in Zhengding" sold 2 million copies (in fact, there were two other books "Xi Jinping in Ningde" and "Xi Jinping in Xiamen" that sold 2 million copies each in the same year, but they were not included in the private authoritative publishing industry data As for the reason, it is nothing more than the result of speculation).

Mao Zedong’s lifetime manuscript fee was 1.24 million yuan. It is said that he did not leave any inheritance to his children, nor did he leave any cash, but it was not in his bank account either. Although ordinary people would not come to the conclusion of this well-fuzzy article because of this: "The chairman's manuscript fee was not left as an inheritance to his children, but the money went to the party and the people." But If someone feels at ease because of this and believes that "the meat is rotten in the pot", even if Xi Jinping or his writing team gets a huge amount of manuscript fees, they will "return to the party and the people" in the future, that is entirely because he is devout enough for patriotism reflect.

However, while the books of the top leaders can sell tens of millions of copies—these books cost money like nucleic acid, because the above printing numbers are the figures in the national industry report, and they have to be included in the book publishing account— Books by non-leaders simply don't sell. In addition to books about leaders and the Party, among the books with an annual sales volume of one million, there are only 29 kinds of children's books (a considerable part of which is sold through primary school apportionment, which is similar to the sales method of Party and state books) and 6 kinds of literature books. Sales of both categories barely broke the million mark.

So going back to the table at the beginning, if the party-state super bestsellers that sold between 87 million and 1.1 million copies are deducted, the actual data of China's publishing industry will be much uglier.

Since I can see this, of course the higher ups can see it even more. And the fact that the higher-ups made this data available to the public obviously shows that what the higher-ups want is this effect: not that the income of the Chinese book publishing industry is ugly, but that the absolute overlord of the Chinese book publishing industry is Xi Jinping and his party. Effect. Apparently the latter was good enough in their eyes.

Regrettably, the issue of "there are no good books in the bamboo slips" leads to the conclusion of "disgrace to China"—or, more precisely, to the conclusion of "disgrace to patriotism".

That's hard to avoid, because it's hard to be optimistic even when it comes to purely economic factors. The purchasing power of Chinese people's books is very limited, because every square meter of housing costs tens of thousands of yuan. If there are bookshelves on this square meter, there may not be a sofa or even a TV set. Most of this limited purchasing power is consumed by party-state bestsellers. How many bestsellers can the rest support? Among these bestsellers, how many are written by the Chinese themselves?

That being the case, why is it strange that "there are no good books in Jane"? It's a cultural issue, it's an economic issue, but in the final analysis, it's a political issue.