The Myth of the Maverick Bookshop

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 bookstores - those carefully curated spaces in Beijing or Chengdu that circulate widely on social media, bathed in warm light and cultural aspiration.

It is this world that Zheng Liu seeks to explain in Cultural Mavericks: The Business and Politics of Independent Bookselling in China (2026). Her book is careful, structured and empirically grounded. It maps an industry that remains poorly understood outside China. Yet for all its rigour, it advances a claim that deserves more scepticism than it receives: that China’s independent bookstores are not merely commercially distinct, but conceptually different from their Western counterparts.

Moral Posture

The argument rests on a deceptively simple distinction. In the West, independence is largely a matter of ownership, being outside corporate chains such as Barnes & Noble or the orbit of Amazon. In China, Liu contends, the term “independent bookstore” denotes something more aspirational. A bookstore is “independent” not just because it is privately owned, but because it privileges cultural value over commercial gain. Independence, in other words, is a moral posture.

It is an elegant idea. But it is also, on closer inspection, less distinctive than it appears. For decades, independent bookstores in Britain and America have defined themselves in precisely these terms - as curators rather than retailers, as custodians of taste rather than mere sellers of stock. Even large chains such as Waterstones have, under competitive pressure, adopted the same vocabulary by granting managers autonomy, hosting literary events and reshaping stores into community spaces. The lines between ‘independent’ and ‘corporate’ have blurred not because culture has triumphed over commerce, but because commerce has learned to mimic culture.

China’s bookstores, as Liu herself shows, are no exception. They differentiate themselves through three familiar strategies. They position themselves “politically” not by opposing the state but by signalling intellectual breadth. They adopt a “moral” role by guiding readers toward worthy books. And they cultivate a “cultural” atmosphere through design, events and ambience that elevates the act of browsing. None of this would surprise a bookseller in London or New York. Nor, for that matter, a proprietor of a dimly lit second-hand shop from decades past.

Structural Difference

Where China does differ is not in ethos but in structure. The country’s publishing industry remains tethered to the state in ways that have no Western parallel. Only state-owned publishers can issue book numbers, effectively licensing what can be sold. Distribution is dominated by the vast Xinhua network, whose reach and privileges in form of property ownership, tax advantages and control of the textbook market give it an enduring edge. Private publishers and retailers operate, but within a framework that is ultimately defined by the state.

This architecture shapes what books exist, how they circulate and what risks attach to selling them. It also explains why the sector has evolved as a boom in the reform era, a squeeze from online retail and a precarious equilibrium in which many independent stores survive on thin margins or supplementary income.

It is precisely here that Liu’s account grows hesitant. The politics of publishing - censorship, surveillance and the shifting boundaries of the permissible - are treated lightly, almost as an aside. In an authoritarian system, the absence of overt conflict is not evidence of autonomy but often the product of constraint.

Consider the fate of Causeway Bay Books, whose staff were detained in 2015 for selling politically sensitive titles. Or more recent reports of bookstore closures and arrests on the mainland. These are not everyday occurrences, nor do they define the experience of most booksellers. But they delineate the outer limits of independence. They are the invisible frame within which all cultural entrepreneurship must operate.

Romanticizing Independents

Liu is right to resist the Western tendency to romanticise Chinese bookstores as sites of quiet resistance. Most are not. They are businesses, often precarious ones, run by people who wish to sell books, host events and make a living. But in pushing back against that narrative, she risks veering too far in the opposite direction and giving a depoliticised account that treats independence as a matter of branding rather than of boundaries.

History suggests otherwise. From the Maoist era, when publishing was tightly controlled as an arm of the state, to the more market-oriented but still supervised system of today, books in China have never been just commodities. They are instruments of education, persuasion and control. The relative leniency shown toward physical bookstores in recent years as compared with the far stricter policing of the internet reflects a calculation about scale and speed, not a retreat from oversight.

This is why the book’s central claim - that China’s independent bookstores are conceptually distinct - feels overstated. The real distinction lies not in how booksellers imagine themselves, but in the constraints under which they operate. If one strips away the institutional context, the similarities with the West are striking: the same struggle for viability, the same turn toward experience and the same blending of commerce and culture.

Indeed, some of Liu’s most compelling material points in precisely this direction. She describes bookstores that operate at a loss, sustained by passion rather than profit. She recounts the ingenuity of booksellers who cultivate loyal customer bases, leverage social media, and experiment with hybrid models to survive. One even achieves six-figure monthly sales through relentless engagement and careful curation.

What her book does less successfully is persuade the reader that China’s independent bookstores are fundamentally different in spirit from those elsewhere. The similarities in form of precarious finances, in the cultivation of community and in the tension between commerce and culture—are striking. The differences, where they exist, stem largely from the institutional environment rather than from any uniquely Chinese conception of independence.

In the end, Cultural Mavericks is an illuminating but partial portrait. It opens a window onto a world that remains under-explored in English-language scholarship. Yet it leaves the most consequential question only lightly sketched: how does one practise cultural entrepreneurship under a system that sets firm, if sometimes shifting, boundaries on expression?

The answer, perhaps, lies in the quiet pragmatism of the booksellers themselves. They curate carefully, host events, cultivate loyal customers and, where possible, avoid crossing invisible lines. Some even prosper. Liu recounts the case of a bookseller achieving six-figure monthly revenues through sheer dedication by bulk buying, relentless customer engagement, and the creative use of social media. It is a reminder that even within constraints, ingenuity finds a way.

But the constraints remain. And until they are placed at the centre of the analysis rather than at its margins, any account of China’s independent bookstores will feel, however elegantly written, slightly unfinished.

None of this diminishes Liu’s achievement. Cultural Mavericks is a valuable guide to an industry that deserves far more attention. It clarifies how the business works, how books move, and how booksellers navigate a crowded and competitive field. But as an account of independence, it is incomplete. For independence, in China as elsewhere, is not merely a matter of intent or identity. It is a function of power. And power, in this case, remains the elephant in the bookshop.

(The writer is a novelist and retired investigator with an abiding passion for crime fiction and Chinese history. He is the creator of the Magistrate Zhu mysteries. Views personal.)