• by Antoaneta Bezlova (beijing)
• Sunday, October 25, 2009
• Inter Press Service

This year’s Frankfurt Book Fair may have been more of an embarrassment than prestige for its guest of honour — China — but the country’s cultural mandarins still believe that the future of cultural ideas belongs to the Middle Kingdom and that the global financial crisis will play a role in helping them achieve that.

Wu Wei — the woman behind Beijing’s 'going global' project for Chinese literature — told the ‘Southern Weekend’, a popular newspaper, last week that the economic downturn has focused global attention on China in just about every aspect.

'In the West in particular, it has made many people talk about China’s model and what will happen when China ‘rules the world’,' she said. 'But the West knows little about China’s culture and ideas and ignorance breeds fear. It is the source of all kinds of ‘threat’ and ‘collapse’ theories. But this interest is also a chance for us to propagate our ideas'.

Beijing has exploited international attention to the full, raising its global profile in politics and economic affairs, and even attempting to export its economic model. Leaving a mark in the world of cultural ideas, though, has presented a tougher challenge.

For several years now Beijing has battled to reverse its 'cultural deficit,' where it imports ten times more books than it exports. Now one of the world’s largest economies and trading powers, China has spearheaded a cultural counteroffensive in a belief that cultural industry is the next step in its transformation from a global upstart to a superstar.

As part of this attempt to raise the country’s cultural profile abroad, Beijing has invested in hundreds of Confucian institutes, teaching Mandarin around the world and launching new foreign-language media outlets. In publishing, Wu Wei of the Information Department of the State Council has led a team of experts tasked with selecting the most appealing titles to be translated and marketed around the world.

They spent nearly five years and invested 15 million U.S. dollars preparing for China’s debut at the Frankfurt book fair — referred to here as the 'Olympics of the publishing world' and held on Oct. 14-18. The country was featured as the guest of honour — a choice that pleased Beijing in a year marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the communist republic.

But to the cultural officials’ dismay, the event, which finished last weekend, was marred with controversy and spats over human rights and freedom of press.

Two conflicting images of China squabbled for limelight at the fair — one of the state-sponsored written word put forward by Beijing and the other of China on the fringe, presented by dissidents living abroad and fighting for their voices to be heard.

Xi Jinping, Chinese vice-president and designated heir to party chief Hu Jintao, led the official delegation of 50 state-endorsed writers and 600 artists. They presented some 100 translated books — the first fruits of Beijing’s 'going out' project for Chinese literature.

These featured two volumes by former party chief Jiang Zemin — one on China’s foray into information and technology industry and another on the country’s energy policies. Fiction titles included best-selling works by famous Chinese writers such as Jiang Rong’s ‘Wolf Totem’ and Yu Hua’s ‘Brothers’. Beijing, however, was clearly uncomfortable with allowing anyone outside of the state umbrella to speak for China. Despite an invitation extended by the fair organisers, it banned author Liao Yiwu from attending the event.

After serving a four-year prison sentence for writing poetry about the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, Liao has remained under surveillance by police authorities, who refused to lift his travel ban. Liao’s book on China’s underprivileged, ‘The Corpse Walker’, as well as his essays about the survivors and victims of last year’s earthquake in Sichuan have reportedly rankled censors at home.

Still, there was a lot the official Chinese delegation could not control. Dissident China was represented by author-in-exile Bei Ling and writer Dai Qing whose books about the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement and the Three Gorges Dam — the world’s largest dam that has generated much controversy at home and abroad — are banned on the mainland. Envoys of the Tibetan exiled leader the Dalai Lama and Uighur pro-independence advocate Rebiya Kadeer, condemned by Beijing as terrorist, were also present.

Beijing could not prevent the foreign media from zooming on its intolerance of free speech and criticism of the communist party. When German magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ ran a feature on the fair, headlined ‘China, the Unwelcome Guest’, Chinese delegates protested that European media and political circles were biased.

China’s clout, though, was felt behind the scenes. Bei Ling and Dai Qing were barred from making speeches at the closing ceremony. An outcry from the public and the media forced the fair organisers to fire their project manager for striking off the names of the dissident writers from the list of speakers at the last moment.

But despite the embarrassment caused by the tug-of war between the official Chinese delegation and the dissident lobby, Beijing put a positive spin on the outcome of the fair. China’s sprawling pavilion in Frankfurt — featuring scrolls with different styles of calligraphy and an engraved 'ink pool' — was described by the media here as the 'place to be'.

'This is an achievement of immense pride for us,' Li Pengyi, a delegation member and vice-president of the China Publishing Group Corp., told reporters at the end of the fair. 'One can say we are going home with 'two bumper harvests' — one for the Chinese culture in general and one for China’s copyright trade'.

To continue raising the country’s cultural profile abroad even in the middle of the current economic downturn, Chinese officials have decided to offer free books to some 100 libraries around the world, according to Wu Wei. At an ongoing domestic book fair at Ditan Park in Beijing, some of the crowd have heard about Beijing’s reception in Frankfurt.

'Foreigners always seek to embarrass China,' said student Zhang Ziying. 'With so much prejudice, how can they like any of our books?'

But Lin Xuecong, who introduced himself only as 'book lover,' says there is little worthy that is being written in China these days. 'It is not about who are the authors of these books. It is about whether they can touch your heart and mind.'

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service