And yet the bookshop, which has been open for more than 30 years in Haidian, Beijing’s technology and education hub, still thrives selling academic books on political science, history and sociology, including many translated works of Western ideas.

On the last day of 2023, All Sages Bookstore was given new life in its most recent relocation to a major shopping centre, surrounded by prestigious universities, research institutes and tech companies.

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Shanghai bookshop brings light to people with vision impairment and other disabilities

Shanghai bookshop brings light to people with vision impairment and other disabilities

The new location in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in Beijing is more spacious and packed with customers.

To understand the bookstore’s unique standing in China’s intellectual landscape, look to its founder and owner, Liu Suli.

He was released two years later and lost his teaching position at the China University of Political Science and Law.

In 1993, Liu co-founded the bookstore, which has survived to become one of Beijing’s leading academic bookstores, with a large readership among China’s intellectuals, especially in Beijing.

Its survival seems exceptional in the realms of both business and politics: several independent bookstores closed for commercial reasons under China’s strict Covid-19 controls during the pandemic, and civil society in the country has suffered repeated crackdowns in recent years.

For China’s intellectuals, restrictions started long before the pandemic

Since October, when All Sages Bookstore announced it was moving, it has attracted a great deal of attention from the Chinese media and academia. Readers speculated about the reasons for the bookshop’s relocation, including possible commercial imperatives or political pressure, but Liu has not revealed the real reason.

In an interview with the Post, he said authorities had not interfered with the bookstore’s operations.

“There are businesses that make money in the worst of times, and there are businesses that lose money in the best of times,” Liu said, without elaborating on the store’s financial situation.

A once prominent dissident, Liu now shows no signs of openly challenging the regime. But he maintains good relations with a wide range of dissidents, including imprisoned human rights lawyers, civil rights activists and silenced academics.

“I am politicised,” Liu said, “but All Sages is not.”

Liu said that as he tried to move away from the daily operation of the bookstore, he kept the right to select books for the shop at all times.

From the time it opened, All Sages built a reputation among liberal intellectuals because of Liu’s personal history and extensive social contacts, as well as his well-recognised taste in books.

Zhou Lian, a professor at the school of philosophy at Renmin University of China and an active public intellectual, said All Sages had become “an irreplaceable spiritual home” for Chinese intellectuals. Zhou is known to be a long-time All Sages customer, along with his wife Liu Yu, a renowned professor of political science at Tsinghua University.

Zhai Zhiyong, a professor of constitutional law at Beihang University, said that over the past 30 years, All Sages Bookstore had become a “knowledge map” for Beijing’s humanities and social science intellectuals”.

“Chinese translations of almost all classic academic works can be found there,” Zhai said. “Even though most of the books are available online, people still want to go to All Sages, like on a pilgrimage.”

By downplaying Liu’s personal views and his role in the 1989 demonstrations, the bookstore has succeeded in reaching out to a wider readership among the elite, including lawyers, doctors and businesspeople.

Media in China have reported that the bookstore’s customers even include government officials.

State media have reported on All Sages many times, describing it as a cultural landmark in Beijing, and in 2022 the state broadcaster CCTV made a documentary about it.

Liu keeps up a degree of public activity, including talks with scholars and interviews with the media. But articles about Liu and his bookstore have kept silent about Liu’s role in the pro-democracy movement, as the bloody crackdown on June 4, 1989, remains a political taboo for Beijing.

01:51

Ancient ‘book doctors’ restore historical Chinese literature

Ancient ‘book doctors’ restore historical Chinese literature

Along with the Chinese government’s strict censorship of media and online speech, most of the Chinese public have learned to forget the Tiananmen Square tragedy.

Still, Liu admitted that his act of opening a bookstore was influenced by the 1989 protests.

“It bears the marks not only of 1989, but also of the 1980s,” Liu said.

Older generations of Chinese intellectuals often hold the view that Chinese society was more open in speech and ideology in the 1980s.

But Liu said: “My affection for the 1980s has weakened, I’ve come a long way [from 1989].”

Beyond political action, by opening a bookstore, Liu said he could observe Chinese society from a unique perspective.

“All Sages is a barometer of Chinese society,” he said.

China’s disciplinary enforcers add ‘bad’ books, sex, drugs to serious offences

His bookstore releases a bestseller list every month and through these books, as well as the book-buying habits of his elite customers, Liu said he could discern the issues society was trained on at different times.

Liu said he took hope from the fact that, despite “changes in hair colour and clothing styles”, the desire for classic academic books among his bookstore’s young readers had not changed.

In a politically repressed society, his bookstore showed “there are still all kinds of possibilities”, Liu said.