Houses made of gold

Photo: CGTN (China Global Television Network) Xi Jinping is apparently keen that Chinese people should read more books. Here’s a picture of the Binhai Library in Tianjin, a spectacular temple to the book. However, as The Economist‘s columnist Chaguan reveals “it does not take long in the library to see that there is less to it than meets the eye. Most of the books are just pictures of spines glued to the wall. And most of the visitors are glued to their phones, not perusing books.” — After all, how would anyone access a book on those upper shelves? “In books there are houses made of gold,” as a poem by an emperor from a thousand years ago asserts. The Binhai Library shows us books in a house of gold! Part of Mr Xi’s problem is not so much the reading bit, it’s the reading the right books bit that tops the list. Literacy isn’t an issue. Mao Zedong, a librarian in early life, “helped propel China from a literacy rate of less than 20% in 1949 to about 60% at his death in 1976. It is…