Zheng Liu’s study of independent bookselling in China reveals a vibrant retail culture but skirts the politics that shape it. The independent bookshop is one of modern capitalism’s most stubborn survivors. From Britain to America, it has endured the onslaught of scale and algorithms, adapting itself into something more than a retail space: part salon, part sanctuary and part civic square. That same romance now attaches itself to China’s flourishing crop of design-led bookstor