Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines

CHINA: Magazine Closure Setback for Cultural Revival

Antoaneta Becker

BEIJING, Nov 19 2010 (IPS) - When ‘Soho Xiaobao’ magazine suddenly announced in October that it was ceasing publication, it marked a huge setback for privately funded efforts to breathe fresh air into contemporary Chinese culture.

Such publications have thrived almost undercover and away from the glare of publicity, existing uneasily with the state-backed drive to re-establish China as a cultural heavyweight.

During the nine years of its life, ‘Soho Xiaobao’ had become much more than just a hip in-house magazine published by one of China’s wealthiest and most savvy real estate developers – Soho China.

Distributed free to a closed list of privileged readers, it was thus unconstrained by state censors’ meddling. ‘Soho Xiaobao’ had pioneered a style of reporting like the U.S.- based ‘New Yorker’ magazine, mixing commentaries and personal diaries and continuously toying with the taboos in print Chinese media. Some of China’s most famous names in fiction and media have contributed pieces to it.

“The magazine is a bit like me, having two identities,” says Meng Mei, a well-known French literature translator and one of the regular contributors to ‘Soho Xiaobao’. “I have a day job as a management consultant but my night job and my passion is translating and writing.”

Behind what was styled as an elite magazine intended for consumption by the wealthy Chinese socialites, ‘Soho Xiaobao’ had managed to in sneak discussions about racism and the intelligentsia’s role in China’s liberalisation, and about political reform and the unmentionable days of 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

One of the magazine’s issues in 2010 was devoted to the theme of happiness in China’s years of economic boom. The articles eschewed clichés like the government’s happiness index and the obvious clash between rising wealth and spiritual dearth.

Oblivious to the political correctness of the day and the simmering territorial tensions in the region, the magazine had instead opted to probe what people in Japan, whose economic boom preceded China’s, think about happiness. Then it had offered the view from Taiwan with musings on the subject by famous mainland writers and essayists.

Hong Ying, a successful author with a long track record of translated novels overseas, is one of those who had regularly penned essays and commentaries for the monthly over the years.

Asked if money was the incentive to write for the magazine, she smiles. “They could afford me, yes. But it was also the attraction of having a definite readership which I knew had refined tastes and strong views and which I knew would for sure talk and think about my essays,” she says.

Never too shy about its aspirations of aiming for the cultural elite, ‘Soho Xiaobao’ had been regarded as a harbinger of a culture nurtured by private capital outside the state’s umbrella.

The social appeal of the power couple behind the Soho China Real Estate development company has greatly aided the magazine’s success. Zhang Xin and her husband Pan Shiyi have fashioned themselves as patrons of avant-garde architecture, rather than real-estate developers. And while not everyone is in awe of its sleek skyscrapers and minimalist, modern vision for Beijing’s urban development, the couple’s leverage as a cultural trendsetter is beyond doubt.

This is what invites questions as to why the sudden closure of the publication. The magazine’s editors have been tightlipped about the reasons for its demise. Internet forums have been abuzz with speculations citing the advance of digitisation in publishing and the revenge of the state censors as possible reasons.

For many years now, Beijing has spearheaded an ambitious drive for cultural renaissance, investing in new museums, opera houses and art venues, and injecting money into expanding the reach of China’s television, newspaper and film industries.

In published guidelines for the development of the cultural industries, Chinese leaders have let it be known that they now see the ascent of China’s cultural products as the next step along a path marking the country’s transformation from developing nation to global power.

The reactions to this campaign, however, have been mixed.

Earlier in 2010, China’s most famous blogger Han Han made a speech at Xiamen University discussing ‘Why China cannot be a cultural power’. The speech became an instant hit after being posted on Internet forums.

“When our writers write, they are self-censoring themselves every second,” he said. “How can any presentable works be created in such an environment? If you castrate all written works like you do with news reports and then present them to the foreigners hoping they would sell, do you think the foreigners are such morons?”

“You can’t have a cultural renaissance initiated by the state,” pointed out Julia Ju, who writes on mainland cultural affairs for several Hong Kong newspapers. “Creativity is individual and basically the whole concept of a state-backed cultural revival is an oxymoron. If there are new and interesting things happening in China’s culture, it is all due to individual efforts and not because of state policies.”

The success of ‘Soho Xiaobao’ as a cultural enterprise outside of the state mission was all the more special for its growing readership. By the time the magazine put out its last issue in October, it had 25,000 readers. The number, however trifle in the bigger picture of the Chinese publishing industry, is noteworthy given the sorry state of many other literary monthlies.

Bearing the mandate of the Communist Party for promoting orthodox literary works, those magazines lost droves of readers once their state funding dried up with China’s market reforms. Many have since closed down while others survive, after transforming themselves into more popular and consumer-oriented outlets.