Page 152 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

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Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.46, 2020 151

Research on China’s provincial-level national reading policy from the
perspective of policy tools
〇a*
QING Qian & LI Guihua〇
“Promoting national reading” is crucial to China’s social, cultural and economic development. The
nation and provinces have successively introduced policies to promote national reading. National-
level policies provide basic guidance and compliance, and local policies and management practices
are tailored to local conditions and are more effective in promoting reading activities throughout
the country.
A policy is composed of a series of policy tools, which are specific methods for achieving the
policy goals. In order to further understand the specific composition of the content of the provincial
national reading policies, this study investigates the current situation of China’s provincial-level
reading policies from the perspective of policy tool which has not been used by Chinese scholars,
and collects and organizes policy samples through web survey method. Based on the theory of
policy tools, combined with the actor network theory, this paper establishes a framework from
the two dimensions of policy tools and the participants in national reading, and uses the content
analysis method to analyze the policy samples. This study sorts out the evolution process of
China’s provincial-level reading policies and finds that the policy space is more and more open,
and participants and their types of participation are increasingly diverse, and government’s
behavioral logic in policy-making has also changed.
This study summarizes the characteristics of China’s provincial-level national reading policies.
Firstly, the application of environmental, supply, and demand policy tools is not balanced,
which is manifested that there is a large gap in the distribution of environmental policy tools and
strategic measures account for the largest proportion, and the composition of supply policy tools
is contradictory and the investment in funds and talent training is insufficient, and application of
demand policy tools is insufficient. Secondly, the participation of different subjects in different
policy instruments is different, which is manifested by that the government’s participation in
policy tools is dominated by macroeconomic measures, and libraries and schools are not prominent
enough as important positions for national reading, and the policy support for other social
organizations needs to be strengthened.
This paper puts forward the following suggestions: firstly, strengthen the coordination of policy
tools and optimize the system of reading policy tools; secondly, explore the functional diversity of
participates and promote them to jointly propel the development of national reading. It is hoped that
this study can provide a reference for government departments to formulate, modify and improve
related reading policies, and provide a better policy environment for the effective promotion of the
national reading project and the healthy development of reading related industries.

* Correspondence should be addressed to LI Guihua, Email: 1147471336@qq.com, ORCID: 0000-0001-8356-620X.