Read your leader

The Read Some Classics series is designed to elevate cadres' moral and cultural sophistication.

What China's government officials pore over are a guide to what they're thinking 

Government officials' reading selections provide much food for thought because of their power and influence.

A survey conducted earlier this year by Insight China magazine reveals 35.1 percent of government officials spend 10 to 14 hours reading per week, and the figure is seven to nine hours for 26 percent.

Reading appears to be a tradition among Chinese government officials.

Mao Zedong once said he could manage a day without food or sleep but not without books. His favorites were classical Chinese history books, such as The Twenty-Four Histories (a collection of books covering the period from 3000 BC to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)) and Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (histories from 403 BC to AD 959, covering 16 dynasties).

Deng Xiaoping was also a fan of history, particularly Records of Three Kingdoms, and a fan of Hong Kong martial arts novelist Louis Cha.

It is reported that Jiang Zemin had a collection of 3,000 books in his office, when he was mayor of Shanghai. Jiang told Time magazine he liked reading Tang (AD 618-907) and Song (960-1279) poems, as well as works by Dante, Shakespeare, Balzac, Tolstoy and Mark Twain.

Hu Jintao recalled how he read Russian novels How the Steel Was Tempered and The Story of Zoya and Shura with passion as a young man, when meeting a visiting Russian youth delegation.

The Fourth Plenum of the 17th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee considered building a learning-oriented Party as an urgent task in 2009.

In May 2009, Xi Jinping proposed that "reading and learning" are necessary for leading cadres to be competent in their work, at the opening ceremony of a seminar at the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC - the top training facility for senior government officials.

According to Wang Changjiang, a professor with the Party School, there has been an initiative to encourage officials to read: Every class is divided into several teams and every team member gives a 15-minute speech about a book they have read. The best are then selected to attend class-level exchanges.

"The driving force (of this initiative) is considerable since competition is involved," Wang says. "They (officials) tend to read professional books in their working areas."

The Publicity Department and Organization Department have recommended books to Party members nationwide since 2010. Four booklists have been forwarded so far.

The first list focuses on deepening understanding of basic Party theories and includes seven collections of classical works by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao, among others.

A publishing industry insider told Oriental Outlook magazine that both the Publicity Department and the General Administration of Press and Publication have special subdivisions in charge of book recommendations. They will follow newly published books, ask publishing houses for recommendations and then place group purchasing orders.

Zhang Zuozhen, marketing director with Sanlian Bookstore, says books about Mao remain the most popular among government officials' group purchases. Biographies of important figures in the CPC and of historical figures in political and business circles are also sought-after.

In addition, officialdom novels, a genre originating from Wang Yuewen's 1999 Painting, have remained in vogue. Some are even regarded as guides for grassroots officials.

On the provincial level, recommendations are made out of more practical concerns. For instance, Hunan province's authorities have made it clear that besides books recommended by the central government, they would attach more emphasis to titles on the contemporary market economy, international relations and information technology.

Under such guidelines, economics and finance books are a frequent choice, such as The Logic of Finance and Currency Wars, although some are still controversial within academic circles.

Compared with government organizations, recommendations by individual officials attract more eyeballs. One example is Wang Yang, Party secretary of Guangdong province.

When he was the Party secretary of Chongqing municipality in 2007, Wang strongly recommended Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat to his colleagues. After he was transferred to Guangdong, he invited Friedman for a visit and the latter considered Wang to be "one of the most innovative thinkers in China's leadership today".

At the beginning of 2011, Wang wrote a letter to cadres of provincial and municipal governments, recommending Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up and Happier: Finding Pleasure, Meaning and Life's Ultimate Currency. The two books about happiness are believed to represent Wang's administrative philosophy.