China’s Export of Its Culture Stumbles Amid State Control

October 19, 2009

Uneasy Engagement
China’s Export of Its Culture Stumbles Amid State Control

By STEVEN ERLANGER and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

FRANKFURT — As China extends its economic reach, it has also increased efforts to promote its culture, or “soft power,” to counter Western influence and improve its image in the wider world.

Yet if Chinese goods are accepted everywhere, its arts and literature, embattled at home after decades of censorship and state control, are proving harder for the government to export.

After years of delicate preparations, China was the “honored guest” this past week at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest and most influential book trade event, based on the number of publishers represented. But what Beijing hoped would be a celebration of its cultural achievements turned into a tug of war between control and free speech, as much a showcase for Chinese dissidents as the state’s approved writers.

Mao Zedong said that power flowed from the “wielders of the pen,” not only from the gun. But the chairman would not be amused to find books like “Mao: The Unknown Story,” an indictment of his rule that is banned in China, displayed alongside the official Chinese exhibit at this year’s fair, which ended Sunday.

When the German organizers and diplomats urged the Chinese to allow a prominent storyteller and musician, Liao Yiwu, to come to Frankfurt, the authorities refused to lift his overseas travel ban, and told him to stop talking about it.

A symposium preceding the book fair titled “China and the World — Perceptions and Realities,” became a major confrontation. Fair organizers withdrew invitations to two dissident writers the Chinese wanted to exclude, Dai Qing and Bei Ling, but welcomed them at the last minute after criticism by journalists and politicians. When the writers made statements, the Chinese delegation walked out, only to return after an abject apology by the fair’s director, Jürgen Boos.

“We did not come to be instructed about democracy,” declared Mei Zhaorong, China’s former ambassador to Germany.

Unlike the exquisitely choreographed ceremonies during the Beijing Olympics, the fair presented a messier and more ambiguous portrait of China on the rise — a country still deeply uncomfortable with its own discordant voices, yet eager to become more competitive with the West in the realm of ideas.

China controlled its own massive display of books, artwork and authors at the fair, including even books from Taiwan, to underline its assertion of “One China.” But it could not censor the 2,500 books about China displayed by others. And while Beijing had many consultations with the German government and arguments with the fair organizers, it ultimately did not push to prevent dissidents and critics — even representatives of the Dalai Lama — from attending the event.

The book fair is not the Beijing Olympics and “cannot be controlled,” said Mr. Boos. He apologized for mishandling the symposium, but said: “It is the beginning of a cultural dialogue. And dialogue is not easy.”

Still, Chinese officials did not attend dissident events, “which were full of people who already agreed with the dissidents,” said the German novelist Tanja Kinkel. “They were preaching to the choir,” she said.

The Chinese themselves were annoyed. With SpiegelOnline headlining its coverage “China, the Unwelcome Guest,” several official Chinese delegates told colleagues that Europe’s politicians and news media were strongly biased.

Li Pengyi, a delegation member and vice president of China Publishing Group Corporation, said happily that China had sold nearly 900 copyrights here. But he complained about the coverage.

“We don’t feel we’ve been hospitably treated,” he said. “China sent more than 2,000 people to Frankfurt. And now this barrage of criticism.”

Zhao Haiyun, spokesman for China’s General Administration of Press and Publication, said that instead of focusing on literature, the media had focused on human rights and censorship. “The German media are very biased,” he said.

Even so, the Chinese did not pull out. The Beijing leadership sent Xi Jinping, China’s vice president and heir apparent to President Hu Jintao, a measure of the political weight they attached to the event.

Michael Naumann, a former German culture minister and now publisher and editor of Die Zeit, a prominent weekly newspaper, said German organizers misjudged the complications of honoring China in a year laden with controversy, including the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 20th anniversary of the crushed Tiananmen Square democracy movement and the 60th anniversary of Chinese Communist Party rule.

“I think the people who run the book fair were kind of naïve when they invited the Chinese,” he said. “But opening this enormous window of the book fair to Chinese writers, whether they are censored or not, will give them a way to sniff out the open forum of intellectual debate.”

Since 2004, China has pursued what it calls its “going out” policy on the cultural front, trying to square its economic influence and new status as a global power, while trying to defuse criticism on issues like Tibet, Taiwan and human rights.

There have been yearlong cultural exchanges with many countries; the opening of hundreds of language teaching centers known as Confucius Institutes; new foreign-language services from official media like Xinhua and CCTV; and new interest in foreign platforms like the Kennedy Center and the Europalia festival in Brussels.

There have been other furors. When China was featured at the 2004 Paris Book Fair, officials initially persuaded the French not to invite the Nobel literature laureate Gao Xingjian, a French citizen whose books are banned in China.

But Frankfurt, with its 7,300 publishers and 300,000 visitors, was a much riskier venture.

Jing Bartz has been the fair’s chief representative in Beijing since 2003 and negotiated strenuously with Chinese publication officials. “China has really wanted to use this platform to promote Chinese culture,” she said. “On the other side, they are worried because they can’t use Chinese rules to do it.”

What helped persuade China was the cultural trade gap. At the 2005 Beijing book fair, the Chinese were shocked that German publishers sold 600 copyrighted works to China while the Chinese sold just one to Germany, Mrs. Bartz said.

Chinese officials worried particularly that the Dalai Lama might attend, or that books would be displayed from adversaries like the banned movement Falun Gong.

The breakthrough came in 2006, said Mrs. Bartz, when Shi Zongyuan, then head of the General Administration of Press and Publication, told organizers: “We just have to make it very clear what is our guest of honor program, and what are the other events.”

China invested $15 million and managed nearly every detail of its exhibition. There was much argument over what translations to finance. The 20 new German-published volumes China financed include works by major writers, like Jiang Rong’s “Wolf Totem,” Yu Hua’s “Brothers,” and Xu Zechen’s “Running Through Zhongguancun.”

Mr. Xu’s hit, about a migrant hawking pirated DVDs and fake IDs in the capital, was unexpected. But of some 100 newly translated titles that China promoted, most are banal introductions to China from state publishers.

“The government has not put on such a concentrated, large-scale event before to promote Chinese literature, so I think it’s a good opportunity,” said Mr. Xu, 31. “Because of the government’s involvement, there are inevitably going to be these ideological problems. But we just have to be responsible to ourselves.”

Since the uproar over the symposium last month, said Mr. Boos and Mrs. Bartz, China has appeared more relaxed. Officials eventually gave up protesting the attendance of those like the Uighur independence advocate Rebiya Kadeer; the Dalai Lama’s envoy, Kelsang Gyaltsen; Ms. Dai, Mr. Bei or Mr. Gao.

“They tried to learn,” Mrs. Bartz said. But she confirmed that while the Chinese were “very satisfied with the business results” of the fair, “they don’t really feel they were welcomed as guests here.” The word went down from the top, she said, not to react to demonstrations or provocations from protesters or journalists.

Back in China, however, the fair has not brought any noticeable easing of restrictions.

Mr. Liao, the writer and musician, was imprisoned from 1990 to 1994 after he wrote a poem about the Tiananmen massacre. Despite an invitation here — he hoped to promote his book about China’s downtrodden, known in English as “The Corpse Walker” — the police would not lift a ban on his going overseas.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Liao said it was not a complete loss for him or other underground writers, given the publicity. “Only by going through these incidents, it seems, can we become known to the outside world,” he said.

Steven Erlanger reported from Frankfurt, and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing