Pirates, copycats, bribes, kidnappings, secret investigations, clandestine teahouse meetings – whoever thought the history of copyright bland, something only for the specialist with a bent for legal history, should read this book and think again. In Pirates and Publishers, Wang revisits the question of copyright in China through an exploration of its fascinating social history. Formal legal frameworks form the background of the book but are not its focus. Instead, Wang traces the role and actions of authors, editors, publishers, bookstore owners and state officials, all those with a vested interest in defining whether ideas and creative works could have owners, who those owners might be, and what ownership would mean. Arguing against seeing copyright simply as an “alien doctrine” imported into China, she reveals instead a host of complex networks and interests – some transnational, but many domestic – that laid the foundations of what is commonly called China's “copyright regime” today.
The book is divided into seven chapters, taking us from the waning years of Qing rule into the early years of the People's Republic of China. Wang starts the story in Japan, exploring the intellectual history of banquan (copyright) in Japan and tracing the early uses of this loanword in China. Banquan merged with Ming–Qing practices of attaching seals to books to reaffirm the location of printing blocks and warn anyone that unauthorized reprinting would be punished. As chapter two illustrates, the popularization of “New Learning” and “Western knowledge” during the late Qing, in particular the reform and then abolition of civil service examinations, opened a major market for new books. Foreign and Chinese booksellers now shared an interest in finding more efficient ways to prevent unauthorized reprints. The Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese came to play an important role during these years: it benefited enormously from a spike in sales, which allowed it to move away from relying on donations, but it also suddenly had to contend with many new publishers that sprang up in the hopes of profiting from an emerging business sector. In this process, translators became “the first generation of Chinese authors to negotiate and receive copyright royalties” (p. 82). Chapter three explores their predicament, focusing on Yan Fu and his – increasingly savvy and (in the eyes of publishers) brazen – attempts to make a living from his intellectual work. For each new translation, he devised improved ways to obtain royalties. How to police that he actually received the correct amount of royalties, however, was a perennial problem, for the onus was on authors to prove violations of any agreement. Chapter four turns attention to “the state.” It highlights the late Qing's legal and practical contributions to copyright, but also the many ways some state officials worked against concepts of copyright as ownership. For them, state protection of selected works was an intellectual privilege bestowed on authors and publishers. Privilege, however, could become detriment when state officials pirated works deemed worthy of reproduction for the state's benefit.
The hybrid city of Shanghai is central to Wang's account: as the base for many different publishers and publishing activities, and the space in which copyright as idea and practice was institutionalized, commercialized, debated and contested. Chapter five reveals the colourful world of the “Chessboard Street Neighbourhood,” focusing on the Shanghai Booksellers’ Guild and Booksellers’ Trade Association. Reminiscent of studies of “Grub Street” (though the focus is quite different), Wang explores how guild members developed intricate book registration lists to protect publishers and how they investigated what they deemed copyright offences. Investigators tracked down copycats, occasionally dealing with unexpected scenarios such as the curious case of Commercial Press's abduction of an alleged pirate. The Guild not only “investigated” in Shanghai, its reach extended to Beiping. In the 1930s, as chapter six illustrates, it financed a Beijing “investigation committee” to protect its members’ copyright. The unscripted job profile of investigators: to inspect, launch raids, bribe and “aid” the police. The New Culture Movement had given rise to a renewed explosion of book publishing, and areas such as Beijing's East Peace Market thrived as spaces of copyright vice, selling reduced pirated versions of anything customers might desire (including, as it turned out, Benito Mussolini's autobiography). Things changed swiftly after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the topic of chapter seven. During the 1950s, copyright was more important than commonly thought, and the Party-state faced a conundrum. Copying could facilitate the wide dissemination of knowledge about socialism. Yet the content of unauthorized copies was difficult to supervise, and even state officials had some interest in guarding publishing revenues. Authors, meanwhile, became workers and subject to continuous debates about how to quantify their labour and remunerate them so that they did not receive an advantage over other workers. For some, this question had tragic outcomes during the Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist campaigns.
The book is based on a wonderful set of published and archival sources, and it offers a compelling and convincing analysis. It is ambitious and wide-ranging, and for this reason, as one might expect, a few areas receive less attention and might prove avenues for future research. I was wondering, for example, what explains the near absence of female voices in the story (Ding Ling is one of the few we “hear”)? Given the importance of publishing for and by women, of the kind explored by Joan Judge, Barbara Mittler and others, I was intrigued that women appeared seldom in copyright discussions. It might be a reflection of the time or a product of the historical record, but it is an absence I would be curious to know more about. The book also largely concludes in the late 1950s, quickly fast forwarding to reform era China. I certainly appreciate the difficulties of working on the 1960s and the 1970s (pre-1978), but already the example of unofficial “reprints” of “internal” materials such as the Little Red Book suggests a more complicated trajectory. As Daniel Leese and others have shown, questions of who could and should reproduce works continued to matter a great deal during the period of “High Maoism.” These may not have been framed in terms of copyright, but I suspect they left an imprint in the minds of those who devised China's “copyright regime” during the reform era.
Wang has given us a meticulously researched and engaging exploration of an important topic: Pirates and Publishers will be an inspiration for future works. It makes a major contribution to modern Chinese history, the history of the book, society, culture and economy. It will also appeal to scholars of contemporary China interested in the complex historical roots of copyright.
