Enhancing the dissemination and sales of cultural goods

For the purpose of enhancing the dissemination and sales of cultural goods, the Ministries of Culture and Commerce, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television and the General Administration of Press and Publication have organized and deeply engaged with the China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair (hereinafter referred to as the “Cultural Fair”). For a more international Cultural Fair, the hosting parties have invited world famous enterprises such as Germany's Bertelsmann and creative enterprises from UK to participate and establish a platform for cooperation between enterprises at home and abroad.

In order to push forward international trade in Chinese books, the General Administration of Press and Publication has implemented the “Plan for International Popularization of Chinese Books”; so far 1,496 book titles have been published in foreign countries. For better access to mainstream foreign marketing channels, the General Administration of Press and Publication launched in 2010 the “Project for the Expansion of International Marketing Channels of Chinese Publications”. In recent years, besides arranging the presence of Chinese publishers as main guest country at international book fairs in Moscow, Seoul, Frankfurt, Thessaloniki, and Cairo, China has also hosted and participated in over 40 international book fairs of various types annually. Among them the Beijing International Book Fair has been listed as one of the four largest in the world.

With support via the above policies, China’s publishing industry is now enjoying good international trade momentum. Firstly, the trade deficit in copyright trading continues to narrow. Copyright exports in 2009 were up 275% over 2005; the copyright import/export ratio has shifted from 7.2:1 to 2.9:1; and in addition the breakdown of copyright exports has been continuously optimized. Secondly, export momentum is strong for digital publications. From 2006 to 2010, Chinese domestically-developed online games have emerged in the foreign market; their export volume exceeded 200 million USD in 2010. For its part, income from foreign downloads in periodical databases was nearly ten million USD and foreign sales of electronic books totaled 50 million Yuan.