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 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. READ MORE…
