User:Jaydavidmartin/The Governance of China

The Governance of China is a two-volume collection of speeches and writings by Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and current paramount leader of China. Presenting the official party line for China's development in the 21st century, the collection is a literary successor to Chairman Mao Zedong's Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung and is an authoritative source on Xi Jinping Thought.

The first volume was published in 2014, and the second volume was published in 2017.

Outline
Governance of China consists of 178 pieces, organized thematically into 35 chapters. Both of the work's volumes were edited by three entities: the State Council Information Office, the Party Literature Research Office (of the CPC Central Committee), and the China International Publishing Group. The volumes are also interspersed with photography of Xi, depicting him "at work and in daily life".

The text articulates Xi Jinping Thought, Xi's political philosophy, as it relates to large-scale political issues concerning China including economics, domestic politics, international relations, infrastructure, technology, environmentalism, peaceful co-existence, and the military. Volume I also contains an appendix which is a political biography of Xi.

Release
Both volumes of Governance of China were formally presented to western audiences at the London Book Fair upon their releases, and both volumes have been translated into other major languages apart from Chinese, including English, Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Digital versions of volume I in Chinese and English are available on digital trade platforms including Amazon, OverDrive, CNPeReading and iReader.

Reception
Reviews of Governance of China have been mixed, including positive reception from Chinese officials, measured praise from non-Chinese leaders, and negative reviews in Western media, where the work is sometimes regarded as propaganda. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have read the book, and to have ordered copies for the company's employees. Zuckerberg's interest in the book has been interpreted as a vested interest; Facebook is blocked in China, and if the block were lifted, the potential result would be a dramatic increase in Facebook's userbase.

Although Chinese media have reported global circulation numbers for the book's volumes on the order of several million copies, Western media have also reported very low sales numbers for the work in Western countries. "There may not be very many readers outside China. The publisher claims the second volume has a global circulation of 13 million. But, according to Scott Morton of Nielsen Bookscan, a data provider, fewer than 100 copies of the English-language version of the second volume have actually been sold in Britain since it was published in November. Sales are slightly higher in Australia, at 124. The first volume has not performed much better: 588 copies in Britain and 430 in Australia." It is likely that freebies of both volumes hugely exceed the number of copies sold to individuals.