Robert Culp: The Power of Print in Modern China
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Robert Culp: The Power of Print in Modern China Columbia University Press, New York, NY, 2019, 371 pp, $65.00, ISBN: 9780231545358 Veronica Huiliuqian Ni1 Published online: 23 January 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
As suggested by its name, this book discusses the print history of modern China and its influence on the Chinese society. It started the story right after the abrogation of China’s civil service examination in 1905, which functioned for over a thousand years and was a symbol of China’s long-lasting meritocracy, and ended the discussion in the 1960s, when the printing industry landscape was damaged and largely restructured by the Cultural Revolution and the cotemporaneous political climate. The author vividly portrayed a printing industry that predated his readers by at least half a century through a detailed presentation of the people of that age, including successful civil service exam candidates from the Qing Dynasty, western-educated scholars, and ordinary laborers, and how they fought and conformed to the great changes of the times and gathered together to devote themselves to the burgeoning industry. This book provides us a great opportunity to look back at the transitional period in China’s history and rethink what the changes meant for Chinese people and the society as a whole through the lens of the printing industry. Printing has closely been connected with every marginalized household to the elite class, opinion makers, and the state machinery, through the powerful linguistic tools and media communications. Printing is a signal of movements in the language, culture, and politics as well as corresponding revolutions in each realm. The New Culture Movement, the May Fourth Movement, the adoption of the American-style New School System, and the Great Leap Forward could not have had such far-reaching impacts if not backed and enhanced by the media. Simultaneously, the chaotic yet hopeful modern China had the appropriate environment for the printing industry to develop and flourish, playing a unique role in the history. The author intimately described the rich context of a foreign country without using excessive jargon or inaccessible ideas. For example, the author used plain language to describe how publishing industry leaders were trying to sell large series of * Veronica Huiliuqian Ni [email protected] 1
Jersey City, USA
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Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:189–191
books that they compiled to libraries; “in promoting the series to regional and local government leaders, Commercial Press’ branch managers emphasized the underdeveloped state of China’s libraries and argued that they… could address fundamental problem for the development of libraries, such as the cost of building a collection.” In addition, the author focuses on explaining the reasons behind social behaviors bridging cultural barrier and temporal gaps. For example, while readers might be questioning why the literati from the late Qing Dynasty were willing to take a job in commercial publishing inste
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