For the past few years, Chinese publishing industry have participated in different book fairs to publicize, exhibit and promote Chinese books, which continuously expanded influence of Chinese publishing industry and culture. Activities held by guest of honor in international book fairs have become an important stage for Chinese publishing industry to launch copyright trade and publicize Chinese culture. After Chinese publishing delegation took part in the Salon du Livre de Paris as guest of honor in 2003, it also participated in the Moscow International Book Fair and Seoul International Book Fair as China section in the Frankfurt International Book Fair 2009 guest of honor respectively in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, as guest of honor of Frankfurt Book Fair which was known as the “Olympic of Publishing Industry,” China demonstrated the 5000-year splendid culture of China to the world through the stage of publishing industry and told the fundamental changes of China in contemporary times. The activity held by China as the guest of honor was a culture exchange with foreign countries with the largest scale, the highest standard and the greatest influence held by Chinese publishing industry in overseas since 1949. 272 publishing agencies from the mainland of China and 26 from Taiwan, China and 15 from Hong Kong, China with more than 2,000 participators and 7,600 exhibitions took part in the book fair in which 2,417 copyrights were exported. In addition, according to the official statistics of Germany, more than 290,000 people were attracted by the book fair, which promoted Chinese publishing industry to go global.
Among various international book fairs, the annual Beijing International Book Fair founded in 1986 and held for 16 sessions successfully has also played an active role in the promotion of publishing trade and exchange between home and abroad. Guided by the policy of “introduce foreign great books to China and let Chinese books go global to promote the international exchange of technology and culture and enhance the mutual understanding and friendship for all countries, the book fair has been among the top four international book fairs with the greatest influence in the world, which is the great event for Chinese publishers to strengthen the communication and cooperation with publishers from other countries. Due to this, this book fair is praised by more and more publishers from abroad as “a mirror for international publishing industry” and “an important name card for Chinese publishing industry.”
From the 3rd to 7th, September 2009, the 16th Beijing International Book Fair with 43,000 square meters of exhibition area and 2,146 booths held successfully. 1,762 publishing agencies from home and abroad participated into the fair with more than 160,000 kinds of exhibited publications and rich exchange and culture activities as the main feature. Over 1,000 activities were held in or out of the exhibition hall during the five days with more than 200,000 attended person-times. Spain, the guest of honor with 1,000 square meters of exhibition area became high lights of this book fair. Nearly 70 cultural exchange activities with the exhibition subject of “Dream of Spain, think of Spain, interpret Spain” between China and Spain were held in which 30 Spanish publishing agencies, 15 writers, Chinese publishers and lots of readers participated. It was said that 12,656 intentions and contrasts of trade copyright were signed, 11,264 of which were copyright intensions, 1,392 copyright contrasts with the increase rate of 10.52% compared with that of last year.
In the future, Chinese government will keep intensifying and expanding policy support for expanding exchanges with other countries; and encourage publishing enterprises from home and abroad to expand the scope and the field of cooperation, enrich forms of cooperation and encourage them to create more great cultural products. At the same time, Chinese government will further intensify the campaign against copyright piracy and set up a copyright service system featuring low cost and quick trade to create a sound environment for the cooperation of publishing industry between home and abroad. It can be predicted that with the enhancement of comprehensive power of China and increasing contribution made by China to the world, the international level of Chinese publishing industry will be elevated and play an important role in the international publishing industry of the contemporary era.
