By Wang Ying

From August 30th to September 1st, publishers all over the world gathered together again in Beijing to participate the 13th Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF). In 1986, when the first BIBF was held, there were only 228 exhibition participators, including 165 foreign participators. Now there are over 1200 foreign exhibition participators coming to the 13th BIBF.

As a developing country, the introduction of copyright is an important way for China to introduce advanced science and technology and cultural achievements. Based on statistics, from 1995 to 2005, nationwide publishing houses have introduced 77,499 items of copyright, concerned with over 50 countries and regions. With 20 years' development, the introduction of copyright in China has stepped towards normalization and internationalization.

As to localize the content, the publishing houses in China and foreign countries have made investment, both manpower and material resources, cooperatively. This has fully expressed the advantage of China to perfectly understand readers and market and the superiority of foreign countries in possession of works and authors.

For example, when introducing Who Move My Cheese, taking Chinese readers' need of pictures at that moment into consideration, publishers in China added iconography to the book in time; when introducing Harry Potter, we learned from foreign websites some preferential reservation methods when they issue new books, and thus prolonged the period of the propaganda and popularization for new books. The well-selling of these books indicates that the localization of copyright books has been creating miracles in sales and has realized the maximum benefit for the introduction of copyright.

Since the reform and open policy, foreign exportation of copyright in our country has made dramatic development in place, content and type of exportation; cooperation with foreign countries has been continually strengthened in level, breadth and depth. Besides, the exportation type has been increasingly diversified, extending from culture and history in China to literature, health care and juvenile books etc..

One thing attracting attention is that the growing global trend in learning Chinese has sprung up the interest in publishing Chinese textbooks and exporting copyright of books. Last year, Beijing Language and Culture University Press won a gold medal in copyright exportation mainly depending on its exportation of 149 Chinese textbooks. Recently, a best-seller in domestic market, Wolf Totem, has created three new records of copyright exportation in our country, including 10% book-tax, payment of US$ 0.1 million in advance, and the synchronic publishing and issuance in English-speaking countries of the world in 2007.

In copyright trade, there won't be any powerful exportation without powerful introduction. According to the figures offered by the State Copyright Bureau in recent days, it's showed that in 2005 the trade deficit between book introduction and exportation of publishers in our country was further reduced; the amount of the copyright exportation was the largest in recent five years. The situation of severe deficit in copyright trade has gone.

In the process of introduction, by continually deepening the international publishing communication and cooperation, the publishing circle in China has broadened its view, learned scientific experience, and in this way directly spurred the development of publishing economy. The data from the State Press and Publication Administration shows that in 2005 there were 573 publishing houses in our country, including 220 central publishing houses and 353 local publishing houses. In 2005, 222,473 books were published nationwide with 63.228 billion yuan fixed price. Compared with 2004, the type of books was increased by 6.8%, the type of new books by 5.7%, and fixed price by 6.6%. The industrial property in book publishing has been standing out and its contribution on social development and national economy has been increasingly enlarged.

Compared with that in 1998, the capital scale of book publishing industry was almost twice in 2005. This means that book publishing industry is transforming into a modern industry; in other words, it's transforming from a career characterized by knowledge intensive to an industry with the integration of knowledge and capital. In 2005, there were more than 100 publishing houses with a capital scale of over 0.1 billion yuan, among whom there were a dozen houses with a capital scale of over 0.5-1.0 billion yuan and some even over 2 billion yuan. The industrial concentration and competitive power of the book publishing industry in our country has been tremendously enhanced; also the industrial scope and economic benefit has stepped into a new stage.

While the copyright trade in China is developing positively, the world-publishing circle is beginning to pay attention to China. Many international publishing groups are seeking for opportunities in China and planning to introduce copyright. This has made great chances for the "Go-out" policy in China's publishing industry.

Since 2002, the government has been actively taking the Plan on Popularization of Chinese Books and encouraging Chinese books to "go out", so as to make the world people learn more about China by reading books in their familiar languages. This plan is practiced mainly by imbursing translation work in order to encourage the publishing agencies in each country to translate books from China. Illustrated by relative principals, there were 74 imbursed publishing books in 2004 and 110 in 2005. In the first half year of 2006, the imbursing application for 98 books has been approved and an agreement will be signed. As for the imbursed foreign publishing agencies (including those who signed an agreement in 2006), more than 30 agencies from 15 countries has been imbursed.

On the 57th Frankfurt Book Fair held in October, 2005, the Central Propaganda Ministry and the State Press and Publication Administration arranged 8 publishing groups to sign about a hundred book copyright exportation agreements with publishers from dozens of countries, including economy, literature, arts, iatrology and juvenile books; 1496 types of copyright trade were settled, including 615 types of copyright exportation. The ratio of copyright exportation to introduction was raised from 1:10 to 1:1.43.

On the 1st Annual International Copyright Cooperation of China held on May 12th, 2006, Russian Phoenix Publishing House made a contract with China Copyright Agent Company, and introduced from China the copyright of 75 books including Confucius and the World at one time. It's a trade with the largest amount in the history of Sino-Russian copyright trade, and with the most types of copyright books exported to one country at one time for China as well.

At present, the "Go-out" mode, with government promotion, enterprise dominance and market-oriented operation, is basically formed. The development of China's book trade is facing a new chance.