The library is crowded with people, yet fewer people are actually borrowing books.
In a library, books have gained an extra purpose: to hold a seat for their absent owner.
A book spread open on the table, a water cup placed beside it, and a canvas bag hanging on the chair back allow a person to vanish for half an hour or even an entire noon. Latecomers, after circling the table twice and spotting these items, usually assume the seat is "occupied." Some, however, refuse to follow this unwritten rule. A regular library-goer told me that when he encounters someone who has occupied a seat and not returned for an extended period, he will take the person's book to the service desk and sit down to study there himself, without accommodating such selfish behavior.
Disputes like this are far from isolated incidents. One side argues that seats secured by waking up early and queuing deserve to be retained, and leaving for a meal does not mean giving up the spot; the other side insists that public seats belong to no one and should be vacated as soon as the person leaves. Both sides are fighting for fairness, yet a book originally meant for reading has long since turned into a territorial marker in these debates.
This leads to a rather awkward scene in libraries: hundreds of thousands of books sit quietly on shelves, rarely fought over, while a single chair next to the bookshelf is enough to spark a quarrel between strangers.
The People Have Arrived, But the Books Haven't Moved With Them
This shift is clearly reflected in the *2025 Statistical Bulletin on Cultural and Tourism Development* published in June 2026.
By the end of 2025, there were 3,253 public libraries across China, offering 1.81 million reading seats. Over the past year, the total number of visits to public libraries nationwide rose to 1.47 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9.3%; meanwhile, the number of seats only grew by 2.6%. The number of borrowed publications, by contrast, has declined slightly — 830 million volumes were lent out, down 0.3% year-on-year.
830 million borrowed volumes certainly does not mean "no one is borrowing books," and these figures do not directly prove that people have stopped reading. Some read inside the library without checking books out, others use the library's digital resources, and many more have long since shifted their reading to mobile phones and tablets. But one thing is clear: public libraries have become busier, yet the circulation of their physical collections has not kept pace. People increasingly need the space that libraries provide, though they may not have the same demand for the printed books on their shelves.
Just how severe is the space shortage? Based on the national population at the end of 2025, there is roughly one public library reading seat for every 776 people. Of course, people do not all show up at the same time, but the strain becomes tangible during summer vacations, exam seasons, and weekends.
According to an August 2024 report from *Beijing Daily*, staff at the Fengtai District Library in Beijing noted that the facility originally had just over 100 seats, which was later expanded to more than 300 after replacing old chairs. "Many readers arrive around 8 a.m. and queue for an hour just to get a seat, and it gets even busier on weekends." This overcrowding is not unique to Fengtai. In the comment section of a viral "National Library Seat-Hunting Guide" on social media, some users even mentioned a "seat-reservation mutual aid alliance": people ask others to save a spot for them, in exchange for a cup of milk tea.
Books still fill entire floors of the buildings, yet seats have become the real resource that requires strategies, queuing, and reciprocal favors to secure.
They Are Not Misusing the Library
People who bring their own civil service exam materials, exercise books, and laptops, and stay seated for a full day without touching any library books — these patrons are not misusing the library at all by using it as a study space.
Among the free services listed in Article 33 of the *Public Library Law of the People's Republic of China*, alongside document information inquiry and borrowing, is the explicit provision for "opening public spaces and facilities such as reading rooms and study rooms." Studying in the library is not an extra favor extended to book-borrowing patrons; it is a basic public service enshrined in law. Bringing personal study materials to learn is no less legitimate than taking a book off the shelf.
What has changed is that for many people, the most valuable service a library offers is no longer free access to books, but the chance to enjoy a period of undisturbed time at no cost.
A 2024 survey by the China Youth Daily Social Survey Center polled 1,342 people: 91.3% said they had a need to study, prepare for exams, and "recharge" themselves in libraries, 88.6% expected cultural institutions like libraries to provide more public study spaces, and 60.2% hoped for longer opening hours. The reasons respondents gave were very relatable: home renovations, shared housing arrangements that make it hard to focus; cafes filled with music and conversation that force you to keep buying drinks to stay seated; and after leaving campus, university classrooms and libraries are no longer accessible whenever you want.
Libraries are not the only places that can meet these needs, but they are significantly more affordable. Paid study rooms offer private cubicles, power outlets, internet access, and quiet, while cafes trade a few hours of seating for the price of a drink. Public libraries rarely ask why someone is sitting there, and no payment is required to justify one's presence.
This is exactly why library seats have become so sought-after. More and more content can be purchased and downloaded online, but a quiet, bright table with a power outlet that costs nothing to use cannot be downloaded from the internet.
Next to the Bookshelves Lies a Different Kind of Anxiety
Securing a seat is only the first step. What people do after sitting down is equally worth noticing. A full library does not mean its patrons are not studying — on the contrary, the most common sight in many popular libraries is rows of people with their heads down working through practice questions.
Yet the content they are studying often does not come from the library's collection. On their desks are past postgraduate entrance exam papers, civil service exam question banks, legal professional qualification exam handouts, accounting certificate textbooks, and vocabulary books — the materials being repeatedly flipped through are all exam-oriented, with predefined scopes and standard answers. Laptops, mobile phones, and noise-canceling headphones serve another purpose: playing online courses, tracking time, and blocking out surrounding distractions.
*Beijing Daily*'s on-site visits also found that most young people studying in libraries are preparing for postgraduate entrance exams, civil service exams, and various professional qualification tests. For example, a young professional chooses to go to the library after work to prepare for the IELTS exam, because her shared rental room is small and full of distractions. What she needs is not a specific book, but the atmosphere of sitting among a group of people who are all studying — a vibe where no one feels comfortable slacking off.
This reality is probably closer to the truth than the claim that "young people don't love reading anymore." Young people have not abandoned learning, but their learning increasingly demands tangible outcomes: an admission letter, a government job position, a professional certificate, or an extra line on their resume. In an era of uncertainty over employment and promotions, aimlessly flipping through a book seems like a luxury, while working through a thousand exam questions along the test syllabus at least lets you see the progress bar moving forward.
The Books Are Still Here, But They Are No Longer the Protagonists
This is a completely different way of using libraries from the reading experience they were originally designed to foster. Traditional library reading often starts with a serendipitous encounter: a person who comes looking for one book might get drawn to another on the adjacent shelf. Reading can be unproductive in a tangible sense, and does not need to prove its value on the same day. Exam preparation, by contrast, follows a rigid, closed path: study only what will be tested, prioritize chapters with higher point values, and set aside any knowledge unrelated to the answers for the time being.
These two modes of learning now coexist in the same space. The former relies more on bookshelves, while the latter depends on tables, power outlets, and eight uninterrupted hours of time. People are still sitting next to rows of bookshelves, but it feels like they are working in a study room where hundreds of thousands of library books are nothing more than a backdrop.
Books have not lost all their value here. They create a serious, quiet atmosphere that makes people feel awkward pulling out their phones, and makes it easier to believe they are doing something important. Libraries have begun to openly embrace this function: when the Shanghai Library East opened, it positioned itself as the "city's living room" for residents. Its performance is no longer measured solely by book circulation, but by whether people are willing to come and stay.
After Seats Run Short, Patrons Make Their Own Rules
But this "willingness to come and stay" is turning libraries into a new battlefield. As more and more people show up just for seats, the traditional "first-come, first-served" principle has gradually evolved into a set of unwritten "informal property rights" agreed upon by readers themselves.
Seat-hogging is not always malicious; more often it is a self-protective behavior forced by scarcity, but in the end, this self-preservation only makes the shortage worse.
Libraries have started to manage seats like parking spaces: Shenzhen Library uses red and green notification slips — a green slip is posted if someone leaves their seat for over 30 minutes outside of meal hours, and a red slip if they leave for over 60 minutes during mealtimes; Hangzhou Xiaoshan Library provides 30-minute hourglasses, and if no one returns after the sand runs out, the next person can use the seat; the Capital Library of China stipulates that leaving a seat for over 60 minutes counts as abandoning it. These rules can clear out "occupied but unused seats," but they cannot create more space. With total annual visits rising 9.3% while seats only grow 2.6%, even the most refined management rules can only make the limited number of chairs turn over a little faster.
Worse still, while library entry is free for all, the chance to grab a good seat is not equal for everyone. People who can queue before opening hours, are familiar with the reservation system, and stay in the library all day find it easier to hold onto seats long-term; those who can only study after work usually arrive to find nothing but empty chairs marked as reserved by water cups and books. The so-called "zero threshold" ends up being a test of people's time, proximity to the library, and seat-grabbing skills.
This Is Not the Library's Failure — It's the Failure of Other Spaces
Seeing all this, it is easy to conclude that libraries have "failed." But this does not mean we should kick books out of libraries. On the contrary, only by acknowledging that more and more people come first for a seat can libraries have a chance to guide them from a single exam question or a screen back to the bookshelves beside them. Pretending that everyone who enters the library is there for the collection will not stop seat-hogging, disputes, and queuing from happening every day.
There is a deeper reason behind all this. American sociologist Ray Oldenburg proposed in *The Great Good Place* that home is the first space, the workplace is the second, and people need a "third space" that belongs to neither — a place to relax, meet acquaintances, or sit alone without knowing anyone. His examples include libraries, cafes, and bars. The problem is that over the years, most of these potential third spaces have quietly come with price tags: cafes require you to order something, paid study rooms charge by the hour, and co-working spaces depend on membership cards. Libraries have become so crowded not because they have gotten worse, but because they are almost the only remaining option that does not sort people out based on consumption power — all the needs that should have been scattered across different places have converged into this one free space.
Libraries turning into free study rooms is not necessarily a failure. It at least proves that beyond shopping malls, cafes, and office buildings, people still need a space that is not allocated according to spending power — a space that has become so scarce now that people have to use an unread book to hold onto it.
(The author of this article is wiwi, founder of the Solo independent developer community.)
This article is from the WeChat public account "Qidianwai," by wiwi, and is republished with authorization from 36Kr.