Why Shanghai’s best-known liberal bookshop is closing down

The owner, founder and customers of Shanghai’s best-known liberal bookshop are counting down the days to its closure as ideological control in China becomes stricter.

The Jifeng Bookstore’s last branch in the city, which opened at the Shanghai Library metro station four years ago, is due to shut its doors at the end of January, when its lease expires.

Long regarded a cultural landmark in China’s financial capital, Jifeng is known for its high-quality academic books on politics, philosophy, law and history, topics that are also explored by well-known scholars at regular seminars held in a large room at the shop.

Yu Miao, who bought a majority stake in Jifeng five years ago from founder Yan Bofei, said the library had decided to resume the premises for its own use and he had encountered “non-commercial” interference that had stymied efforts to find an alternative location.

“Some projects, including cultural/creative centres, invited us to open a bookshop at a favourable price or even rent-free,” said Yu, an entrepreneur in his mid-40s. “But the local culture departments made it clear they did not want Jifeng to move in when the landlord attempted to apply for a licence.”

Yan opened the first Jifeng Bookstore at Shanghai’s South Shaanxi Road metro station in 1997 and went on to open a string of other branches over the next decade or so. But rising rents and decreasing sales due to competition from cut-price online booksellers eventually forced their closure.