Historical background

The modern public library movement in China has its roots in the first two decades of the twentieth century. During this time, China was experiencing a sort of literacy revolution, with the colloquial language becoming a medium of expression and the Mass Education Movement teaching the illiterate countryside to read. This resulted in an explosion of popular, easy-to-read reading material for the masses. Between 1921 and 1925, the number of periodicals registered with the post office increased from 921 to 1,323 and local authorities began to set up reading rooms in unused government space (Yu and Davis, 1998).

The first piece of library legislation enacted in China appeared in 1909, and established the National Library at Beijing and a provincial library in the capital of each province. This law was followed in 1910 by a piece of legislation that stated that free libraries should be established by local authorities in all provinces, counties, and self-governing units smaller than counties. These libraries were mainly reading rooms, and many were not truly ‘public’ libraries in that they charged small fees for their use. By 1922, China had approximately 290 free and public libraries serving its population of 433 million (Yu and Davis, 1998). By 1936, this number had increased to 2,005. In 2004, the number of libraries had increased to only 2,719, but libraries had suffered disastrously during the Sino-Japanese war that began in 1937 when all but 391 libraries of all types in all of China were destroyed (Ting, 2004; Library Society of China, 2006).

During this period of rapid expansion of the Chinese public library system, an American librarian by the name of Arthur E. Bostwick was assigned the task of inspecting the Chinese library system in 1925 and promoting the idea of free public libraries in the country. While his visit did not have the intended effect of generating interest in American-style public libraries on a mass scale, it did have the notable effect of promoting the concept of an open-shelf library and therefore encouraging the circulation of library books into Chinese homes (Yu and Davis, 1998).

When the Communists took power in 1949, the government began to take an intense interest in the country’s public libraries. Lenin saw libraries as a means of educating and indoctrinating the masses and the Chinese government under Mao began to import library materials and library experts from the Soviet Union wholesale with similar goals (Yu, 2001). The collections of the public libraries were under direct control of the government and anything undesirable was purged. The collections were stocked with Marxist-Leninist (and, of course, Maoist) reading material. During this time two new types of libraries appeared in China: the rural reading room and the labor union library. The labor union library performed largely the same function as the Mechanic’s library in the West; it stocked mostly technological materials aimed at increasing production, although they stocked cultural materials as well. Although there were pockets of resistance in Chinese librarianship to the idea that libraries should only serve peasants and workers, by the end of the 1950s these elements had been effectively purged and the libraries were under the ideological control of the Communist government (Ting, 2004).

Current framework

Under the first few decades of Communist rule, the hierarchical public library structure received its budget entirely from the central state and was effectively a promotional tool for the planned society and economy. With the economic reforms of the late 1970s, however, sweeping changes began to take place in Chinese society and public libraries were not unaffected. Although the Ministry of Culture issued national public library policy directives that were specifically designed to shape the growth of libraries within China (for example, 1982’s ‘Regulations for Provincial (Autonomic Region, Municipal) Library Work’ laid the groundwork for provincial and large city libraries) and also took to issuing five year plans urging public libraries to achieve goals like Internet connectivity, local governments were financially and administratively responsible for public libraries from 1978 on, even going so far as to issue their own library regulations as those of the national government became out of date (Yu and Xu, 2006).

Libraries in China operate in a multi-tiered system. At the top sit the provincial libraries, beneath them the prefecture/ municipal libraries, followed by county/district libraries and at the bottom level the township/neighborhood libraries. Each strata of the public library system is funded by the corresponding level of government. The wide range of economic development across China results in large funding disparities between libraries. Public libraries in the richest areas of China receive more than double the per capita funding of those in the poorest areas. This is reflected, of course, in the quality of library service that the libraries can offer. Per capita collection size in the richest areas of China is almost double that of the poor areas. Resources are concentrated largely in the eastern part of the country, as this is the portion that contains most of the main urban areas (Clarke et al., 2011).

A consequence of the decentralization and local funding of public libraries in China is that some libraries (and other sectors of the public service sphere) are not able to properly fund themselves. Although they still received funding from the central government, this was sometimes inefficient and libraries could find themselves unable to add to their collections for an entire year. Some enterprising libraries have sought alternative sources of funding, practicing what has become known as ‘walking on two legs’ instead of hopping along on the single foot of government funds. By 1989, approximately 44 percent of Chinese public libraries had found it necessary to grow an additional leg. Often, the funds raised by the libraries were greater than the funds given to them by the government. In that same year, 22.5 percent of all money spent by public libraries was raised by the libraries themselves (Chu, 1994). Libraries have also become widely accustomed to charging fees for the services they provide in order to generate funds, which has eroded the philosophy of public service which is central to operating a public library (Yu and Xu, 2006).

Legislation and legal structure

No overarching public library law is currently in force in China. However, even if it has not risen to the task of properly funding public libraries or passed a piece of national library legislation, the national government of China has at least done a good job of developing a useful set of standards for its provincial public libraries. In 2003 the Ministry of Culture collaborated with the China Society for Library Service to create standards for provincial public libraries. The standards operate on a point system: a perfect score for a library is 1,000 points. There are six categories in which points are scored: resources, technical services, readers’ services, professional research and development, management, and overall assessment. The categories are weighted according to the importance assigned to them by their creators, so that it is possible to score 280 points in the readers’ services category but only 135 in the professional research category. Libraries have their scores tallied by teams appointed by the Ministry of Culture, which normally include library professionals, administrators in charge of library services, and the like. The standards also mandate a user feedback survey (Lynch and Yang, 2004).

China, like India, faces the enormous logistical challenge of providing public library service to an absolutely huge, developing country. Certain facets of China’s public library system are coming together nicely, while others remain works in progress. The lack of a national library law is a drag on the development of public libraries. As the Library Society of China notes, the lack of any overarching legislation makes libraries unsure of implementing government regulations and standards, rendering them ‘passive and helpless’ (Gengsheng and Yu, 2009). It also, by leaving public library service up to the underfunded localities, leaves the system as a whole vulnerable to massive inequality. Progress is being made on this front though. According to a report given to the 2011 Conference of Directors of National Libraries, the drafting of a public library law was in China’s national legislative plan for 2011 (Country Report to CDNL, 2011).

Conclusion

The overall picture of China’s public libraries is of a diverse range of quality, from the struggling rural backwater to the shining new urban information center. The main goal of any Chinese public library policy or piece of legislation should be to even this out by ensuring more equality of funding for libraries across the country. China’s lack of a cohesive national vision and an over-reliance on local authorities to properly fund and operate public libraries has led to severe gaps in service. Rural libraries in China currently face such uncertainty of funding that rural residents are used to libraries coming and going, appearing and disappearing as political agendas change. It’s understandable then that public libraries in these areas have yet to establish a cultural foothold, as they are so sporadically available that it is difficult to even gather reliable statistics on their use (Clarke et al., 2006). The process of decentralization that began in the late 1970s was in general a positive step for China, but it has allowed its public libraries to become, in some cases, forgotten.

Like much of China, public libraries are developing rapidly. The implementation of a national library law should help spur local initiatives that in many cases are already under way in much of rural China. As libraries begin to develop, though, it remains to be seen whether these facilities will be truly public and open to all. The Chinese public library that is legitimately open to all patrons is currently the exception rather than the rule, and a great many charge fees or a ‘deposit’ for their use (‘Library’s fairness policy wins praise’, 2011). The maturation of China’s library system depends not only on its government passing supporting legislation and standards, but on the libraries themselves adhering to their mission. The next few years, if national library legislation is indeed enacted, will be a very exciting time for China’s public libraries.

References