Last weekend, another important cultural activity that caught the attention of Beijingers was the 13th Beijing International Book Fair, held last weekend at China International Exhibition Center. While the Chinese publishers rejoiced at achieving a trade surplus in sales of book rights, international publishers also found China a huge potential market worth exploring. Wang Jing has the details. 　　

Introduced two decades ago, the Beijing International Book Fair has now become the most important book fair in all of Asia. It boasts a number of services and attractions, including copyright and book trade, cultural activities and exhibitions and information exchange. 　　

The four-day book fair last weekend attracted more than 1,700 booksellers and organizations from 50 countries and regions, double the number of last year. Sales of book titles and translation rights have also increased. 　　

A total of over 12,000 copyright transaction contracts and letters of intent were exchanged, an unprecedented number in the fair’s entire history. So far, about 1,100 book title export deals have been sealed, increase two-fold over that of the last fair. Imports of translation rights also increased about 7 percent to about 900 titles. Chinese publishers have finally realized a book trade surplus at the Fair. 　　

This trade surplus is in part due to the improvement in the overall Chinese book quality and the world’s increased interest in China over the years. Government policy support for the domestic publishing sector, such as an easy application for book numbers for certain kinds of books is another factor. The book fair also organized a high-level forum for Chinese and foreign publishers, which also helped for them to gain trust for each other to facilitate business deals. 　　

Editor in Chief for the Zhong Hua Book Bureau Li Yan says the Beijing International Book Fair has given Chinese publishers easier access for their books to go international.  　　

“In the past, we imported more book titles into China than exporting ours. Now the situation has been reversed. Take the Zhong Hua Book Bureau for example, our titles export has largely surpassed that of our import during this fair. China is attracting world attention as it moves to become a big power in the publishing sector. I believe this book fair will become even more important in future.” 　　

The fair has already proved to become more and more important for international publishers. This year, international exhibitors to the fair accounted for 70 percent of the total. Many are influential international publishers. 　　

Just as Huw Alexander, representative of the world famous Sage says, no one can neglect the huge potential book consumption market in China. 　

“I usually attend the London Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair. And in China it seems this is very well organized and a lot of my customers are here. So it’s very valuable to us and we’ll be coming back again next year because it’s being very well organized. We sell a lot of our books in translations to Chinese publishers. This is the biggest market in the world for translations. We are also looking for developing close working relationships with selected publishers over here so that they will publish more of our books.” 　

Sage is not the only foreign company that has an eye for the giant Chinese book market. Take children’s books and college educational books market for example, presently China has over three hundred million children and teenagers, in addition to another 20 million college students on campus. With the steady improvement in public living standards, books consumption for these two age groups has also seen substantial increases over the years. This has made educational book trade the most active area during the fair. 　　

Regina Schinner, who is responsible for translation rights transactions for the British Harcourt company says, 　

“This is my second time at the book fair. We probably will have about 500 to 600 books—children’s books and school books and books for students, university students as well. It’s very professional and it looks very well organized. It’s probably not quite as important as the Frankfurt Book Fair because there are more people there from different countries. But I think for Asia, it’s probably the most important book fair. So we are looking for publishing partners who also publish educational books. We agree licenses with Chinese companies and the Chinese companies publish the books in Chinese.” 　

The guest of honor for this year’s book fair is Russia. As this year is also the year of Russia in China, more than a hundred Russian publishing firms have made a collectively appearance at the fair under the theme: reading new books, discovering a new Russia. Five famous contemporary Russian writers have also showed up at the fair to meet bookworms who love their books. 　　Although this is the first time for Svetlana Yu. Remizova, General Manager of the Russian Language Publishing House to come to the Beijing book fair, she’s very glad for the potential business opportunities presented. 　　

“Our books here are mainly Russian language learning materials, targeting different group of learners. Though now it’s still early for me to calculate our returns from this book fair, but I’m sure it has presented us many potential business opportunities. We also had many opportunities to exchange ideas with our peers during this fair.” 　　

It seems the Beijing International Book Fair has reached its ultimate goal, where both domestic and foreign publishing firms are happy. The general public are happy too. The book fair had not been a fair exclusively for the publishing sector. It opened to the general public on the last day, providing book worms and eager learners direct access to the kind of books they are looking for, whether they are domestically printed or came from across the Atlantic. Ultimately, it is for the benefit of the readers that these book fairs are all about.