In the book market, most of the books on the best-seller list are literature, philosophy, biography, history and other types of books, and those related to economics are relatively rare. When we mention economics best-selling books, what comes to mind in our reading memory seems to be some investment and financial management guides, which are "not worth mentioning" in the mass reading market.
Stills from the second part of the TV series "Ma Dashuai" (2005).
In recent years, with the sales of books such as " Great Powers and Great Cities ", " Xue Zhaofeng Lectures on Economics " and "Being Inside the Matter", people have begun to pay attention to general writing as a way to make economics books best-selling. In fact, in the past forty years, there have been some best-selling books on economics. The earliest one is "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism" by economist Xue Muqiao.
In terms of subject scale, economics is spread across various departments. Through accumulation, this subject has been highly standardized and normalized. If we talk about the branch territory it has opened up, it is known as " economics imperialism ", which can provide economic explanations for all human behaviors, phenomena, systems and cultures.
However, in contrast, economics readings that can have an impact on the public reading field are scarce. On the one hand, economic research is mainly expressed through treatises and reports. On the other hand, even economists who are more influential among readers often do so because of their views—such as expressing economic opinions on a hot issue—rather than because of their discussion of the views. In other words, economists can quickly express their economic opinions, but it is not easy to spread their "economic analysis" (borrowing the concept from Joseph Schumpeter ) and cannot let readers understand how these opinions are derived. out. Readers have no possibility or interest to search for professional papers and read them. Many misunderstandings of "only knowing one but not the other" have arisen.
best-selling book is an example of relatively successful dissemination of "economic analysis". Of course, some analyzes are prudent, and some are crude. The number of prints only means the degree of acceptance of a book at a certain stage and within a certain range. And the reasons why a book sells well are sometimes vague and accidental. Putting the best-selling economics books of the past forty years together, on the timeline, there is a transition from "getting closer to the problem" to "getting closer to the reader". In the early days, the literature references were relatively simple, but there was a strong awareness of the problem. At the beginning of this century, economics books emerged with the goal of being best-sellers, taking into consideration topics, cover designs, recommendations, etc., in an attempt to increase their appeal and make readers take a second look. In the last ten years, general writing has emerged.
One of "close to the problem" and "close to the reader" can meet the necessary conditions for sales, and the rest is left to other conditions.
This article is from pages B02-B03 of the special feature "Between Chance and Inevitability: The Road to Best-Sellers in China's Local Economics" on August 5 in "The Beijing News·Book Review Weekly".
breaks out
The first best-selling book on Chinese local economics is "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism" by economist Xue Muqiao.
In December 1979 (Xue Muqiao himself recalled that it was early 1980), "Research on China's Socialist Economic Issues" was published by People's Publishing House , with 50,000 copies printed. On the eve of the "publishing boom" of the 1980s, although this number is not unique, it is one of the few academic monographs with a circulation of more than 30,000 copies. If it is limited to economics, Then "this is the only one." In the following three years, it was revised and reprinted, and the number of copies reached three million. According to the statistics of Lu Dingyi's "Preface to the Revised Edition of Xue Muqiao's "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism"" published in the second issue of "Dushu" magazine in 1984, the supply of this book exceeded the demand throughout the country that year, and the People's Publishing House had asked many The content and paper formats were provided locally and reprinted by various places. The number of copies of this part was about 6.5 million. The two print runs combined, total nearly 10 million copies. There are foreign language versions in English, French, Japanese, German, , Serbia, and Spanish. In the field of economics, there is no precedent before it, and there will be no one with the same number of prints since.
In December 1980, the second printing of "Research on Chinese Socialist Economic Issues" was copyright page .
"Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism" was groundbreaking in the historical context of reform and opening up, especially economic reform. This is a necessary condition for it to become a publishing miracle. The book has ten chapters and nearly 200,000 words. The basic content of the book is to discuss the history of socialist economic construction from 1949 to 1978, "and study a series of major economic issues that have not yet been solved or have not been completely solved", and proposes to abide by economic values. The new view of laws aims to change the highly centralized planned economic system that had been influenced by the Soviet Union for a long time. Therefore, it has an echo with the practice of economic reform.
However, what we also need to see is that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the issue of how to develop a commodity economy within the traditional socialist system was shared by economists who advocated reform. of. At the beginning, "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism" was not the only new book to explain this. For example, Zhuo Jiong's "On Socialist Commodity Economy" ( Guangdong People's Publishing House ) published in October 1981 also focused on the commodity economy in a clear and clear way. The difference is that this is a collection of essays that presents the author's process of thinking about the commodity economy, while "Research on China's Socialist Economic Issues" is a monograph that reviews history and raises questions and methods at the point of reform. In the early stage of economic reform, the focus was on rural areas, where the household contract responsibility system was implemented. In urban areas, there were only sporadic pilot projects, and it was not until 1984 that it became a focus. In the first edition of 1979, Xue Muqiao had already discussed that "uniform public ownership cannot be enforced reluctantly." In the revised edition of 1983, the year before the focus of economic reform shifted to cities, he turned to consider the complexities of the state-owned economy and the collective economy. sex, and continues to take a step forward on the issue of how to separate ownership and management rights. Its view is to make these two economic forms become commodity producers and operators who operate independently and are responsible for their own profits and losses.
The comedy movie "星星", released in 1982, showed the economic life at that time through the conflict between father and son during the market-oriented transformation of a state-owned shoe factory.
The closest thing to Xue Muqiao's "Research on China's Socialist Economic Issues" is actually "Socialist Economics" written by Sun Yefang . The two are cousins, both economists. They, together with Yu Guangyuan and other economists, were tasked with writing political economics textbooks in the 1960s. They challenged the economic system and line at the time by proposing views such as "emphasis on corporate profits." During the "Cultural Revolution", Xue Muqiao was imprisoned. "Cowpen", Sun Yefang was arrested and imprisoned. During this period, Xue Muqiao wrote the first draft of "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism", while Sun Yefang salvaged part of the "On Socialist Economics" that he had already written. By the time he was released from prison in April 1975, he used the method of silent memory to review the contents of the book. I went through it dozens of times in my mind. After the "Cultural Revolution" ended, Sun Yefang restarted his writing plan like Xue Muqiao. Unfortunately, he died of illness in February 1983, leaving behind the unfinished manuscript of "Socialist Economics." In 1985, the manuscript was published by the People's Publishing House under the title "Manuscript of Socialist Economics".
Xue Muqiao and Sun Yefang.
In the book "Circulation Chapter", Sun Yefang believes that enterprises are no longer just workshops with technical independence, but also relatively independent economic entities. Each company is a company that independently accounts for and , so their product exchanges must be equivalent exchanges." This is consistent with Xue Muqiao’s views on the reform of the state-owned economy and the collective economy. However, he kept hitting a wall during his actual argument. He used the category of "value" to promote the reconstruction of the economic system, but "value" comes from another socio-economic form, including commodity production, exchange and consumption based on the monetary system, that is, the commodity economy. At that time, if you wanted to study "value" under socialist conditions, you might "make mistakes" if you didn't pay attention.He wandered within the boundary countless times, and once he stepped into the penalty area, he turned around and returned without success. This was the fundamental reason why he did not finish the manuscript.
Xue Muqiao also encountered the same dilemma of "value" argument. In 1986, the 10th issue of " Economic Research " magazine published the "Revised Japanese Translation Postscript" written by Xue Muqiao. He mentioned the setbacks of "Research on Chinese Socialist Economic Issues" in discussing the law of value: "One of the aspects of this book is The disadvantage is that it overemphasizes the conscious use of the law of value and ignores the need to fully utilize the spontaneous adjustment effect of the law of value. What is emphasized is that planned prices must conform to the relationship between value and supply, but there is no elaboration on the spontaneous adjustment of market prices for many commodities.”
Both Xue Muqiao and Sun Yefang advocated expanding the autonomy of state-owned enterprises in their operations and allowing state-owned enterprises to coordinate production and management. Exchange complies with the law of value, and at the same time strives to demonstrate that this does not conflict with the existing classical Marxist economic framework. And this is an almost impossible task. Subsequently, what no one expected was that starting from around 1985, very marginal economic forms such as self-employed individuals and private enterprises created a market-oriented environment and became a key force in the economic growth miracle. Unfortunately, the "Manuscripts on Socialist Economics" published at this time was already far away from the reality of economic reform, and could not reproduce the publishing scene like "Research on Chinese Socialist Economic Issues". If "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism" had been published after 1985, it might not have been possible to have a print run of 10 million. Of course, this does not mean that the significance of the publication of "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism" was entirely shaped by time. Xue Muqiao had already been infinitely close to economic issues in that era and expanded the space for discussing the commodity economy. He, Sun Yefang, The arduous explorations of a group of economists such as Yu Guangyuan and Zhuo Jiong, as well as their frankness and prudence in not avoiding problems encountered in their academic studies, have become incomparable spiritual heritage.
Moving towards the new century
In March 1988, the simplified Chinese version of another best-selling economics book, "The Orange Seller" was released. This is a collection of essays by economist Zhang Wuchang , or it can be called a collection of short essays. "Words from the Orange Seller" is one of them, and the book was published under this title. Zhang Wuchang borrowed Ming Dynasty poetry master Liu Bowen 's "Words from the Mandarin Seller", but replaced "manganese" with "tangerine". This was because he went to the streets of Hong Kong to sell oranges to earn money. Material. His short article allowed mainland readers to see that the methods and narratives of empirical economic research can be so alternative and full of interest in "rebellion" to modern mainstream economics.
In 1988, when Zhang Wuchang's "The Man Who Sold Oranges" was selling well, the movie "The Stubborn Master" was released. It tells the story of three young people who opened a three-story shop in Beijing that "helps others to prioritize, solve problems for others, and suffer hardships for others." T Company is the epitome of a generation of young people's "sea craze".
The traditional Chinese version of "The Story of the Orange Seller" was published in Hong Kong in November 1984. It was reprinted twenty-five times, with a print run of about 80,000. Sichuan People's Publishing House introduced to the mainland in 1988 to publish the simplified version. A total of more than 30,000 copies were printed and sold out. "Book City" magazine published an article "Review of the Orange Seller" in August 2000. It was originally the preface to the updated version of by Hong Kong Hua Qianshu Publishing House. Zhang Wuchang mentioned "The Story of the Orange Seller" in it. It is his best-selling book. As for the reason, he himself believes that it breaks away from the shackles of the academic system and does not "science" but "teaches".
In addition to the official version, "The Orange Seller's Words" also has many handwritten copies, printouts, and photocopies. Before the simplified Chinese version was published in the Mainland, and after the simplified Chinese version was not reprinted, it was a reading habit for friends or classmates to borrow "The Story of the Orange Seller" from each other. Economist Zhou Qiren recalled in the book "Real World Economics" (first edition in 2004, quoted here from the 2021 reprint) that he "privately printed" "The Orange Seller" from a friend in Beijing in 1985. 》He knew Zhang Wuchang there and learned about his property rights and contract theories for the first time.
In the five years after the publication of "The Man Who Sold Oranges", there was no best-selling economics book with tens of thousands of copies.It is worth mentioning "On Competitive Market System" ( China Financial and Economic Press ), which is a collection of dialogues between Wu Jinglian and Liu Jirui. When the theory of failure of market economic reform emerged, he advocated that "we have no choice but to reform." ", explained the necessity and urgency of market reform. Although the number of print runs was not as good as that of best-sellers in other years - the first edition in December 1991 was 6,000 copies, and it was reprinted in April 1992 with more than 5,000 copies - it caused a stir at the time. Huge response. In October 1992, the socialist market economic system of China was officially established. In December of the same year, "On Competitive Market System" was awarded the first prize of the "China Book Award" by the jury of the National Press and Publication Administration, and other relevant departments. The jury believed that it "made a historical contribution to the preparation of public opinion on the target model". "Sexual Contribution" (refer to "China Economic Science Yearbook" edited by Li Jingwen and others, China Statistics Press, November 1993). Its actual influence in the reading and policy circles at that time can be seen from this.
In September 1994, "Collected Works of Gu Zhun" was published, and an economics best-seller with tens of thousands of print runs was once again produced. Guizhou People's Publishing House initially issued 3,000 copies, and then increased the volume. By the fourth reprint in September 1995, the total number was 34,000 copies, and "Gu Zhun fever" immediately started. Economist Dai Yuanchen also mentioned in the first issue of "Economic Research" magazine in 1995 that it is difficult for friends around him to buy "The Collected Works of Gu Zhun" in bookstores.
"Gu Zhun's Collected Works" includes articles such as "The City-State System of Ancient Greece" and "On the Law of Commodity Production and Value under the Socialist System", as well as Gu Zhun's correspondence with his brother Chen Minzhi. "Collected Works of Gu Zhun" made many people know about Gu Zhun for the first time, as well as his stories, knowledge and perseverance. It is called a model of Chinese intellectual spirit. Gu Zhun and Sun Yefang were both economists who earlier proposed that "the problem of commodity production under socialism must be studied". He is even called "the first person in China's socialist market economic theory" (some also believe that Zhuo Jiong ), it is infinitely sad that he passed away before economic reform. "Gu Zhun fever" is a cultural phenomenon, but from Gu Zhun's perspective as an economist, it is also an echo of the spirit of economic reform in the 1990s. After that, time came to this century, and the economics best-seller market entered the next chapter.
"Writer" Era
Stills from "Big Shot" (2001).
In the first year of this century, World Book Publishing Company introduced and published the American Robert Kiyosaki 's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". In the financial industry reform and "stock speculation and financial management", wealth anxiety and other phenomena Under the influence of Rise, it quickly sold out and has since been released by more than ten publishing houses. However, at this time, the copyright pages of books no longer uniformly indicate the number of copies as they did in the last century. Some have them, some do not, and the specific number of copies cannot be counted. "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" becoming a super bestseller indicates that at the beginning of the new century, the book market for bestsellers has become diversified and more commercialized. Techniques and strategies are used in naming, from cover recommendations, topic selection to content They are all trying to figure out the needs of readers, entering the era of "reader democracy", and eventually everything will come to an end, and this is the inevitable law of the book market.
Let’s go back to the best-selling book on local economics. In January 2007, the first volume of " Stirred Thirty Years of " by financial writer Wu Xiaobo was published ( CITIC Publishing House , Zhejiang People's Publishing House ), and the second volume was published in a bound volume the following year. "Thirty Years of Turmoil" recalls the development history of China's private enterprises through literary language and depicts the psychology, emotions and choices of the characters, which allowed readers at that time to see a different way of writing the history of economic development. The subjectivity of his writing has also been subject to some controversy. "Thirty Years of Turmoil" soon became a best-seller with millions of copies printed. In the "Rich List of Chinese Writers" jointly published by "Chengdu Business Daily" and "Chengdu Business Daily" in 2009, Wu Xiaobo ranked with 750 Royalty income of 10,000 yuan ranks fifth, higher than Han Han , Yu Dan and other best-selling authors of the year.
In 2007, another economics bestseller with a sales volume of one million appeared. Its title may be the most widely circulated among all local economics bestsellers - this is " Currency War ". The first printing was in June 2007. By November, CITIC Publishing House had reprinted it for the 13th time. On average, it was reprinted once in less than half a month. The editor Song Hongbing became a famous financial history writer.
"Currency War" puts together financial and monetary materials from different sources. It believes that since the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694, including the assassination of Lincoln, various world changes have been the consequences of the manipulation of financial capital, or at least have Its figure. This shortened, single chain of causality narrates financial history as a history of conspiracy, which will inevitably arouse the desire of readers from all walks of life to quickly understand the changes in the world. The 2008 global financial crisis of and also accelerated its sales. Since 2009, Song Hongbing has published five series of "Currency War" successively, and has foreign language versions such as French, Russian, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese .
In August 2009, "The Logic of Finance" by economist Chen Zhiwu was published by International Culture Publishing Company · Times Guanghua . Although "The Logic of Finance" is a collection of essays, after editing and selection by the author himself, its basic content discusses why human beings inevitably need financial markets, forming a refutation of the "financial conspiracy theory" of "Currency War". "Publishing Business Weekly" published a report on "The Logic of Popularity" in October 2009. The sales volume of "The Logic of Finance" was close to 100,000 copies in one month of publication, and has since increased to 500,000 copies.
Looking back on the first decade of this century, investment and financial management became a "must-have course" for the urban middle class, and the financial crisis swept the world. As a result, people have both the inherent desire to realize "wealth freedom" and the fear of distrust in finance, and these constitute inevitable conditions, making "The Logic of Finance" a relatively professional but not completely general book. Books get attention. The sudden appearance of "Currency War" paved the way for the topic in advance. This book has been criticized for containing "conspiracy theories" from the beginning. The publisher also followed the trend and highlighted the confrontational relationship between the two books in promotion, resulting in an unexpected bestseller for the collection.
Stills from " I am not the god of medicine " (2018) in the era of "general knowledge"
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In September 2010, " Lang Xianping said" "Why is our life so difficult " ( Oriental Publishing House ) was published, discussing hot topics such as food, housing prices, and medical care. Lang Xianping is a popular economist in the TV era. The "Lang Xianping Says" series of books have basically become best-sellers. Since there is no way to count its specific print runs, we have to find data from online platforms such as Dangdang , Jingdong , Douban and other online platforms. Why Our Life Is So Hard is probably the book in the series that has attracted the most attention. As of the publication of this article, a single version has more than 10,000 seller comments under the self-operated entries of Dangdang and JD.com, and more than 7,000 people have participated in rating it under the Douban entry. The cover design of the book
was a typical model for "expert-style best-sellers" at that time. Photos of the author giving a speech or thinking were used as the cover image, and keywords and recommendations were attached. After that, this exaggerated pattern became less common.
time forward to 2013. In January of this year, two best-selling books appeared in the field of economics.
The first book is "Games and Society" published by Peking University Press by economist Zhang Weiying, which uses general writing to discuss the basic methods and conclusions of game theory. The first edition was published in January 2013, and the same edition was printed for the seventh time in June 2015. The second book is Wen Tiejun, a scholar who studies China's rural issues. He published " Eight Crisis" in Oriental Publishing House. It was first published in January 2013 and was printed for the 9th time in December 2016. The total number of prints is 36,000. Thousands of books. From 2017 to 2019, Wen Tiejun recorded the video course "Economic Crisis and China's Experience in Responding to it" (two "crises" were added). Since then, his lectures and Q&A videos have become popular on video platforms such as , Bilibili, and . "Eight Crisis" also continues to sell well, and as of December 2020 it is already in its 28th printing.
Next, in July 2016, Lu Ming's "Big Country and Great City" (Shanghai People's Publishing House ) was published. It was reprinted 8 times in two months, and the number of prints reached about 200,000 in the fifth year. As China's urbanization construction approaches nearly two decades, "Great Powers and Great Cities" uses empirical data, case narratives and universal laws to explore transportation, air, housing and education, and concepts influence people's understanding and change of these issues. Lu Ming believes that China needs larger and more large cities, so that land allocation and labor flow can be adjusted by market demand to form a unified market. When readers think about the " national unified market " proposed in 2022, they may think of that year's "Big Country, Big City".
Next is "Xue Zhaofeng's Lecture Notes on Economics" (CITIC Publishing House). Xue Zhaofeng became famous for recording paid courses and variety shows. "Xue Zhaofeng Economics Lecture Notes" was published in June and July 2018. By May 2019, it had sold about one million copies in one year. After that, he also set an astonishing record of selling more than 60,000 copies in a live broadcast.
At this point, the second decade of this century is over. The best-selling economics books at this stage, with the exception of "Eight Crisis", are all general writing. The last best-selling general writing was "The Man Who Sold Oranges" in the 1980s, which is different from "The Man Who Sold Oranges". However, the general writing in recent years has lost its romantic and eclectic exposition style. The author has been obviously affected by the specialization of the subject, and everything from chapters, arguments to notes has shown a trend of monographization. The first best-selling economics book in the 1920s, "Inside the Matter" (Shanghai People's Publishing House), its general writing also has such characteristics. Based on a review of academic research, this book tells readers how local governments have participated in and promoted economic development in the past few decades. The book was published in August 2021 and was reprinted 13 times within 5 months. By the first half of 2022, the number of prints reached more than 600,000. This print run is relatively impressive among best-selling economics books, but in the past few decades, no book, including "Currency War", has come close to the print run of "Research on Economic Issues of Chinese Socialism".
"Research on China's Socialist Economic Issues" is at a critical moment in the formation of consensus on economic reform. When a market-oriented environment finally emerges, the book market will be like other markets, where readers, as buyers, choose books based on their knowledge structure, occupation, interests and personality. Books are mixed with mud and sand, and readers have their own preferences.
Print run myths are no longer possible. Written by
Beijing News reporter Luo Dong
editor Li Yongbo Li Yang
proofreader Xue Jingning
