Director of the Macmillan Group. In October 2006, the British publishing house signed an agreement with China's Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, to co-publish a series of Chinese learning textbooks entitled Discover China, and a series of Nature magazine classics.

In 2005, a large-scale promotion program was launched, called China Book International, or CBI. Under the program, the Chinese Government aims to fund relevant institutions to boost the international promotion of Chinese books.

More than 1,000 book titles were included in the list of recommended books in 2006, and the translation fees of foreign publishing institutions that buy copyrights of Chinese books or that have been granted rights to publish Chinese books overseas will be provided by the Chinese Government. In 2006, the subsidy provided by the Chinese Government reached 10 million yuan ($1.28 million), covering publishing houses from 19 countries.

The government also supports the development of China's book fairs and funded local publishing houses to participate in foreign book fairs, facilitating increased communication. On March 6, 2007, chinabookinternational.cn, the official website of the CBI program was launched.

During this year's BIBF, the Chinese Government has granted letters of appointment to 12 foreigners, all veterans in the publication industry, inviting them as consultants of the CBI program. They are expected to provide opinions and suggestions to Chinese publishers on how to deal with the problems in translation, how to explore the international market and other related issues.

"What kind of Chinese books are needed by foreign readers? What kind of subjects are they interested in? What kind of books will enter the international market easily? We need to listen to the answers to these questions from our foreign consultants, as we cannot just proceed blindly," said Wu Wei, Director of the CBI Office.

The CBI program has also established a translator pool, gathering experienced translators both from home and abroad. "Translation is a bottleneck affecting the export of Chinese books," said Wu. "Many foreign publication institutions have to give up their plan to import Chinese books due to the difficulty in finding qualified translators." She also said that up to now, they have established a relationship with over 70 veteran translators and welcome more people to joint the team.

The Chinese Government has issued a series of preferential policies in the publication sector, including lowering the value-added tax rate of publishing houses from 17 percent to 13 percent, in order to relieve the burden of publishing enterprises.

Based on these active moves, China aims to export 3,900 copyrights by 2010, up from 2,000 in 2006, according to Yan Xiaohong, Vice Minister of the General Administration of Press and Publication of China.

However, there is still a long way to go for Chinese publishers to become strong participants in the competitive world publication arena. Currently China has a big deficit in book trade.

"Generally, for every one book we export, we import seven varieties of foreign books, and the ratio against Germany, the United States and the Netherlands can be as high as 1 to 100, " said Zhao Qizheng, former Minister of the Information Office of the State Council of China.

Besides the bottleneck of translation, another reason behind this high trade deficit is that China imports a large volume of books on science and technology from some developed countries, Zhao explained. "We need these books because we are lagging behind others in these areas," he added.

There is another belief in Chinese publishing circles that the key to copyright trade is book content. A report in China Business News, a leading financial publication, said that up to now the books that China has exported are mainly focused on subjects such as traditional Chinese medicine, qigong, Chinese cuisine, and Chinese social customs and conventions, while few books on China's contemporary society, science and technology and law are found in other countries.

The main function of books exported should be to allow readers outside the country get to know China and its culture better, said Yang Muzhi, President of the China Publishing Group.

In addition, industry analysts said the outdated packaging and marketing methods of Chinese books also hinder their exports.