When Typhoon Doksuri reached northern China at the end of last month, several days of torrential rains in and around Beijing caused disastrous flooding in the region. The authorities had no choice but to release floodwater into other areas to protect Beijing. In the city of Zhuozhou in China’s Hebei Province, a minority of city residents received text messages advising them to evacuate, but things happened too quickly. Before there was time to warn everyone, still less to take flood-prevention measures, Beijing’s floodwater was released and this vulnerable region was very quickly underwater.
Zhuozhou is one of China’s most important centers for book publishing, warehousing and logistics. The warehouses of hundreds of publishing companies are concentrated there, including big publishers and dealers such as BooksChina.com and CNTime. BooksChina’s warehouse, which contains 4 million volumes, and Modern Chinese’s warehouse, which contains 3.6 million, were completely swamped by the floodwater. The whole industrial park has suffered losses totaling more than 1 billion yuan (US$139 million).
CNTime chief executive officer Ran Zi-jian (冉子健) said that the company had not received any advance notice of the floodwater discharge. To make matters worse, none of the books were covered by insurance. There are specific reasons why China’s book industry has hardly any insurance.
One of the principal reasons is that there is an exceedingly great a difference between the listed retail price of books and their actual selling price. It is commonplace for e-commerce platforms to sell books at half price. With the emergence in recent years of livestream e-commerce, also known as live commerce, it is not uncommon that books can be purchased for just 1 yuan each during livestreams.
Moreover, books are highly inflammable and susceptible to moisture damage, so insurance companies prefer to stay clear of them.
China’s paper media and publishing industry were already struggling to get by, relying on the passion of writers and artists. China is world-famous for its low-price books. People can even buy hardcover books for 10 to 20 yuan and paperbacks for less than 10 yuan.
Books sell for little more than their cost price. After deducting International Standard Book Numbers registration fees, copyright royalties and the costs of printing, paper, proofreading, binding, logistics and marketing, how many cents of profit can be made from each book? With the industry in such an impoverished condition, the government and the public’s weak awareness of intellectual property rights is what has really driven it into a downward cycle.
Zhuozhou’s “sea of books” is a reflection of the microcosm of China’s knowledge industry. Anyone who works in the field of literature and arts must be heartbroken to see tens of thousands of books soaking in water while not being able to do anything about it. What lies there soaking is not just the pulp that was used to make those almost 10 million books, but also the spiritual culture of the current era.
At time of writing (Friday last week), Zhuozhou is still entirely cut off from supplies of water, electricity and goods, with hundreds of thousands of residents waiting to be rescued. The rainstorm has officially killed 20 people in the city, and that number continues to rise. In addition, countless people are still missing.
As the capital city, Beijing is indeed important, but while protecting the cities of Beijing, Xiongan and Tianjin no matter what the cost, who will protect the safety and property of Zhuozhou’s 700,000 residents?
Bai Zhao is a Chinese freelance artist living in London.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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