Chinese publishers embrace London Book Fair

The London Book Fair kicks off on Tuesday, with publishers and rights agents from around the world convening in the United Kingdom for one of international publishing's largest trade fairs.

Several of China's leading booksellers will hold events throughout the week, looking to enhance their influence and offer companies a route into China's book market, the second-largest after the United States.

China generated 470,000 new titles and 10.5 billion euros ($11.2 billion) of revenue in 2015, according to the International Publishers Association.

Beijing is keen to push Chinese titles globally, and home-grown publishers are actively pursuing rights to foreign titles and partnerships with foreign firms.

The Chinese market is particularly attractive to British publishers - China produces around 20 million new English speakers each year, while English classics and contemporary bestsellers, such as Harry Potter are already hugely popular among Chinese readers.

Chinese publishers are holding events in and around the capital throughout the week. More than 100 industry leaders will discuss cooperation in international publishing on Wednesday afternoon at West London's Olympia Exhibition Center at a summit co-organized by the China Publishing Group, the Publishers Association of China and the International Publishers Association. The International Publishing Journal's Big Data Report on the Chinese Publishing Market will be launched at the summit.

China Publishing Group donated more than 100 titles to Bohunt School in Hampshire on Monday, where a leading sinologist Cecilia Lindqvist gave a lecture on the beauty of Chinese characters. Proportionally, Bohunt, which was featured in a BBC documentary on British and Chinese ways of teaching in 2015, has more Mandarin learners than any other British school.

CPG Vice-President Jiang Jun said: "We the CPG have always been committed to promoting Chinese culture overseas and as a State-owned publishing group, we feel duty-bound to promote Chinese culture overseas."

Two dozen of Europe's leading sinologists will convene on Tuesday afternoon for the launch of three new texts in the field. Later that day, at London's Southbank Center, English-language titles about China's biggest business moguls, including Alibaba's Jack Ma, Wanda's Wang Jianlin and Huawei's Ren Zhengfei, will be unveiled.

On Wednesday morning in Olympia, the Encyclopedia of China Publishing House and Massachusetts-based Berkshire Publishing Group will launch a co-published encyclopedia about China, and that afternoon the CPG will launch prints of two ancient Chinese classics at Oxford University's Bodleian Library.

And on Friday afternoon at central London's Oxford and Cambridge Club, UK-based education think tank Macat International will announce the addition of 100 Chinese works to its digital library.

Liu Zhong, CPG's director of international cooperation, told China Daily: "The major point of our participation in the London Book Fair is to get people interested in China, to move some of the focus from Western culture to Eastern culture. The LBF is a great platform to achieve these goals, as it's one of the most well organized and attended publishing trade fairs in the world. We also share a close relationship with UK publishers."

Bo Leung in London contributed to this story.