This week, our editors bring news of what China’s recently announced five-year plan has in store for its writers and readers, and a(nother) reported death of Nigerian literature.
Xiao Yue Shan, reporting from China
I’m sure there are many who would agree with W. H. Auden’s assertion that: ‘In so far as poetry, or any other of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.’ But the good members of the China Writers Association are not among them. 2026 marks the first year of the ‘Fifteenth Five-Year Plan’, which sets out China’s goals and resolutions for social and economic development; within this ambitious blueprint (which interestingly highlights the state’s role in market management as well as the predictable emphasis on sustainability, innovation, and digital technology), there are distinct cultural goals, adherent to national ideology and inextricable from its constructions of power. Certainly, China has always held its literature in great esteem, exercising its political potentials more fervently than arguably any other nation, but even in our long parade of book-loving leaders, Xi Jinping has shown himself to be amongst the most ardent advocates for a symbiotic relationship between the arts and the state, following in the footsteps of Lu Xun in defining literature as first and foremost a form of guidance. As he stated in a speech at the 2014 Forum on Literature and Art: ‘Our contemporary writers and artists should take patriotism as the main theme in creation, guide the people to establish and adhere to correct views on history, the nation, the country, and culture. . .’
The ‘Fifteen-Five’, as the Plan is called, iterates the necessity of developing culture ‘in line with core socialist values’, mentioning seemingly innocuous intentions like ‘promoting the construction of a book-loving society’, as well as more zealous motives like ‘improving the ability to guide mainstream opinion’. Overall, it continues the lineage of CCP policies to unify, optimise, and regulate, with a lot of ‘expanding’ and ‘enhancing’ (toe-curling words for those of us who fear the hyperactive thrust of our moment). In following these mandates, some of the Association’s strategies are standard—such as the “全民阅读促进条例 Regulations on Advancing Reading for All’, which includes increasing publicly funded literary events, as well as a plan to send writers and literati to rural areas (sound familiar?) to encourage engagement and to ‘beautify’. Others are combating newly urgent issues such as AI, looking to fortify copyright laws and educate literature workers as to the available protections.
More notably, many of the Association’s initiatives fall in line with China’s ever-increasing desire to be taken seriously as a global power. The ‘Fifteen-Five’ announced that 2026 will see the second China-Arab States Summit to further trade between the two countries, and the Association in turn has announced a China-Arab States Special Session of the 2026 International Youth Poetry Festival. Additionally, this year we’ll be treated to the third ‘东盟青年作家中国行 Young ASEAN Writers’ Tour of China’; a ‘文学读中国 Reading China Through Literature Project’ focused on Latin America; and further evolution of the ‘俄苏书友会 Russia-Soviet Book Club’. And of course, closer to home, the Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan branches of the Association will use literature to ‘enhance’ the ‘emotional connections’ between China and the places it farcically sees as its wayward children. (It’s worth mentioning, amid this particularly volcanic time, that the ‘Fifteen-Five’ states an objective to more strenuously repress Taiwan’s independence movement.)
It’s pretty boring to read though all of the Association’s lofty ideals—which hints, too, at the mediocre texts that will surely be produced in its wake. It is also chilling. In the words of Walter Benjamin: ‘There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.’
Literature, as you’ve figured out by now, is not—and has never been—just literature in Communist China, which hasn’t had the veil of aesthetics pulled over its eyes in thinking that our beautiful novels and poems and plays are solely enchantments of the intellect, of the creative impulse, of humanism, of ars poetica, of witness, of experience, of dialogue; it is all that, sure, in potent and generous combination, but it has also blatantly been of commerce, of doctrine, of methodology, of moralism, of security, of propaganda, and of psychological warfare. This is true everywhere. Culture is domination—culture charges itself with hegemony—but perhaps it is only in China that politicians are so wont to realise that writers are, in fact, their agents.
Of all this, I can only be grateful that writers—at least the good ones—are notorious for being suspicious, treasonous, capricious, and difficult to manage. After all, that’s the work; much less than making the world in a certain image, they’d much rather make a world of their own.
Bethlehem Attfield, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Nigeria
Despite the many literary festivals held in Nigeria last year and the emphasis on debut novels, some critics continue to express concern about a perceived decline in Nigerian literature. Last month, Kolu Daniel wrote an article titled ‘Nigerian Literature is Dead (Again)’, in which he summarised these critics’ perspectives, clarifying that what is being lamented is not a genuine decline in literary output, but rather the loss of a unifying ideological voice and a strong literary industry that supports and advances the art of writing. This absence has prompted writers to seek diverse avenues, including moving to countries with strong literary institutions or turning to alternative means to tell their stories. As a result, their work targets cosmopolitan audiences, leading to a heightened but brief visibility at the expense of long-term reach and durability.
Daniel notes that the high visibility of Nigerian books might suggest vitality, but their transient nature could also justify the ‘death’ narrative. In this sense: ‘What we face is not an ending, but a choice of emphasis. We can continue to chase visibility and mistake its glare for health. Or we can attend to reach, to the slower work of holding, arguing with, and returning to the stories we claim matter.’
Such changes in the creative industry were also aptly illustrated at a lively Storytellers’ Conference in Lagos on 6 January. With the theme ‘Stories That Move Us,’ the event sought to promote Nigerian storytellers across various creative sectors. Speakers from government, culture, media, and business emphasised the power of visual storytelling to inspire, educate, and economically empower communities.
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