March’s Urgent Nonfiction Books for Students

An act of violence among school students may be prompting readers in China to make quick bestsellers of social nonfiction for youngsters.

Buckwheat harvesting in Hebei province, near Zhangjiakou and a wind p0wer plant. Image – Getty iStockphoto: Xenotar

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

A Children’s Bestseller: ‘What To Protect Yourself With’

On March 10, according to authorities in the small city of Handan, a 13-year-old schoolboy allegedly was beaten to death by three of his classmates in the Hebei province of North China, a large province that all but surrounds Beijing. The victim’s body, as reported by Daike Kang for the Associated Press, is said to have been all but unrecognizable, and was found underneath a tarpaulin in an abandoned vegetable greenhouse. The three alleged assailants were arrested.

The six-volume ‘What To Protect Yourself With’ by Chen Jinggon and Mi Nuo, published in November 2023 by Beijing Institute of Technology Press

The incident has triggered what news reports describe as a heated media debate over issues in China of juvenile crime. On Tuesday (May 14), the country’s ministry of education announced a new campaign to address issues including excessive homework and bullying in schools. As we read in Farah Master’s report for Reuters on Tuesday, “Beijing has, since 2021, tried to reform the education sector and ease academic pressure on students, clamping down on a US$120 billion private tutoring industry to cut education costs. Many residents have cited high childcare and education costs as reasons not to have children.”

And our associates at Beijing’s OpenBook are pointing out that in March, as news of this assault was carried in state media and spread through other means, book buyers in China were responding to “high-profile social incidents” of this kind, especially boosting sales of “legal enlightenment books.”

“Children are the flowers of the motherland,” one of our colleagues writes to us, “the hope of the nation and the future of the country. Thousands of families care about their healthy growth.”

One of the key issues brought again into focus by this horrific incident in Handan is the plight of “left-behind children,” migrant kids in rural areas left with grandparents or others by parents who must work in major cities for much of the year.

Since the March 10 murder, many members of the public, OpenBook’s team tells us, have greatly increased their attention to topics including:

• Campus bullying
• Laws and regulations on children’s protection
• Children’s self-protection

‘How Girls Can Protect Themselves” by Pan Lijie, a January release from Democracy and Construction Press

Amplified by social-media dynamics, OpenBook says, sales of books touching on these issues have increased further, one of them being What To Protect Yourself With: The Comic Civil Code (six volumes) by Chen Jinggon and Mi Nuo (published in November 2023 by Beijing Institute of Technology Press), a book that walked right onto the chart for the first time in March at a handsome No. 6.

Another is an even newer book: How Girls Can Protect Themselves by Pan Lijie was published in January by Democracy and Construction Press—the editors of which may want to consider a companion volume on how boys can protect themselves, too, considering the events in Handan.

Like the book by Chen and Mi, Pan’s book wasn’t on the bestseller list at all earlier, but under the pressure of the news from Handan it appeared in March at No. 17. Both this and the No. 6 ranking of What To Protect Yourself With are accomplishments in any of the slow-moving lists of the Chinese market.

The quick response of readers to these issues in March indicates that many readers in China are giving serious attention to these problems, which of course are shared in other world markets as contemporary youngsters encounter increasing demands and tensions in an age of digitized communication and accelerated expectations.

Below, then, are OpenBook’s overall lists from March 2024 of bestsellers in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books, followed by its lists of bestselling fiction and nonfiction in China by authors from outside the country. At the end of our article, as always, you’ll find notes on how the lists are constructed.

OpenBook’s Fiction Bestsellers, March 2024

OpenBook’s Nonfiction Bestsellers, March 2024

OpenBook’s Children’s Bestsellers, March 2024

Foreign Author Fiction Bestsellers, March 2024

Foreign Author Nonfiction Bestsellers, March 2024

Notes on the Charts

OpenBook is a privately owned industry-data research firm based in Beijing. It functions somewhat as Nielsen and NDP do from the West, and Nielsen Book Research International has worked with OpenBook in Asian operations. With authoritative data and information resources, OpenBook is able to deliver consulting service to partners who would like to explore the Chinese book market and identify suitable partners.

At last report, OpenBook monitored more than 18,000 online and offline bookstores.

The online channel includes digital retailers such as large self-operated online stores, platform stores, and small- and medium-sized stores. The offline channels include more than 4,800 bookstores. Coverage includes most of the state-owned and influential privately owned bookstores in 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet are not included in OpenBook’s system.

In 2022, OpenBook tracked around 76.21 billion RMB in sales (US$10.62 billion).

Retail outlets include:

• Traditional bookstores
• Supermarkets
• Campus bookstores
• “Professional” stores, said to be small stores with a specific industrial or trade focus
• Airport stores

In addition, OpenBook is drawing data from online bookstores of three main types:

• The “Tmall” stores of Alibaba (Tmall is described as a marketplace of companies that create storefronts online to sell products including books)
• The “JingDong” Stores of JD.com (similar to Tmall as a marketplace of both individual companies and bookstores operated by JD.com)
• Ten independent online bookselling retailers

China has 500 or more publishers in operation today. Most of them are government-owned. Private publishers are required to generate ISBNs for their titles from a publishing company that is government-owned—which, in other words, creates a system in which all ISBNs are registered through government channels. The government approves each book published in China.

More China bestseller reports from Publishing Perspectives are here, and more on the Chinese book publishing market is here.