China Market Focus press conference in March, from left: Alistair Burtenshaw (director of the London Book Fair), Richard Mollet (chief executive of Publishers Association), Professor Liu Yang (China Pavilion's designer), Susie Nicklin (director literature of British Council), Bi Feiyu (Chinese writer) and Zhang Fuhai, director of the international exchange and cooperation department of the General Administration of Press and Publication. Provided to China Daily

Rapid growth of China's publishing industry is offering myriad opportunities for Western publishers, who are increasingly penetrating China's vast book market.

"Until around 10 years ago there were very few Western trade publishers selling English-language books in China, but the market there is changing quite rapidly now," says Simon Johnson, group managing director at HarperCollins, which expanded into China five years ago.

Titles published by HarperCollins range from literary classics to educational tools, for example, the online dictionary it published together with the People's Literature Publishing House in 2006.

Johnson was talking as preparations were being made for the London Book Fair, to be held from April 16 to 18 at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, which features China as its country of market focus.

The tradition of market focus started in 2004 and offers an opportunity for the chosen country to promote its business and culture to a world audience.

The fair will put China's publishing and literary industries in the spotlight, encouraging trade relations between China and the rest of the publishing world.

Since the 1990s, international giants like Pearson, Macmillan, Bertelsmann and Cambridge University Press have paved the way for foreign publishers' entrance into China.

However, more rapid opening up of China's book market after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 offered late-comers such as HarperCollins and Random House many niche opportunities, including selling English-language books in China.

Simon Littlewood, international director of Random House Group, says his company reached a milestone last year with the establishment of a representative office in Beijing, which represents "a statement of interest and commitment".

Although Random House now makes available many English-language books for book sellers in China to import, and has already sold the publishing rights of many books to Chinese publishers, Littlewood believes the next step is to look for a formal Chinese partner, and start publishing in China's domestic market.

"The difference is that if you just sell the right, (the Chinese publishers) get on with it in their own country, whereas if you have a joint partnership there is cooperation and mutual learning opportunity," Littlewood says.

Meanwhile, established publishers like Pearson and Cambridge University Press are leading new trends in China's publishing industry and are helping bring it up to speed with the rest of the world.

Pearson Education, which first entered China as a co-publisher of educational books, has greatly expanded its presence by buying Wall Street Institute in 2010 and Global Education last year.

Now with about 7,000 employees in China, Pearson has become a leading provider of English- language teaching text books, classes and assessments, and is well known for its digital initiatives in publishing.

Isa Wong, president of Pearson in Greater China, says Pearson is keen to share with its Chinese partners its technology, processes and business model for digital publishing.

"The Chinese market has become much more receptive to digital publishing over the past two years, as Chinese publishers quickly acquired the hardware for digital publishing," she says.

As digital publishing is high on the agenda of China's publishing industry, the country's General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) signed a memorandum of understanding with Pearson in 2010, asking it to help China keep up with latest digital publishing initiatives.

Another aim of the agreement is for Pearson to help China deliver more books from China to a global audience, and reverse the trade deficit China has with the rest of the world on copyright purchase.

In 2010 China imported the copyright of 16,602 items but only exported that of 5,691 items, according to GAPP statistics.

To cultivate talent in Chinese-English translation and help Chinese books go global, Pearson's subsidiary Penguin Books has established a Chinese-English language translation program, working with GAPP.

Penguin has also published many Chinese titles in English, including Wolf Totem, for which Penguin famously bought the English-language copyright for $100,000 (76,000 euros).

Based on the personal experience of Jiang Rong, a university professor in Beijing, Wolf Totem later became the founding winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007.

Wolf Totem is also representative of a group of Chinese books arriving on bookshelves outside China in recent years with help from the Chinese government.

In 2004 the State Council Information Office and GAPP launched China Book International, a project that subsidizes the publication of Chinese books outside China.

The initiative was encouraged by the success China enjoyed at the Paris Book Fair in 2004, in which China was the market focus. About 70 titles, translated and put out by French publishers, were well received, with about a third of the books being sold out within six days.

China Book International has grown greatly over the years. Last year 240 agreements were signed to provide subsidies for 124 publishers from 29 countries.

Other titles under this initiative include Yu Dan's Confucius from the Heart, published by MacMillan in 2009, and the book series Cultural China, by Cambridge University Press and China Intercontinental Press in 2009.

Cultural China, consisting of 30 books, covers a wide range of topics including Chinese thought, wisdom, art, craftwork, technology and objects, clothing, food, housing, healthcare and entertainment.

Stephen Bourne, chief executive of Cambridge University Press, says he sees a great audience outside China keen to understand the country, so the Chinese government's efforts to promote China through publishing is "not a harangue, nor is it a cynical attempt to blind-side Western readers and commentators".

"China has been quite open in saying that it has realized that in order to be accepted into the global community on equal terms, it needs to be better understood, both culturally and politically. Our opportunity is to find the texts and images that will explain Chinese thinking and perhaps open eyes in our own countries."

Bourne's comments are echoed by Littlewood, who says that doing business in China is a "two-way street".

"While we might be seeking access to a new and dynamic market, we have to understand what is on the agenda of the people in that market. I think that's where the word partnership comes in strongly."

But despite Western publishers' growing understanding of China's publishing environment, they still believe that certain challenges warrant great attention.

Johnson says the main challenge for Western publishers is to overcome cultural differences. "It's not sufficient to simply take a best-selling book from the UK and expect the market in China to want the exact same identical book."

Bourne says another challenge is the lack of good translators to cope with increasing demand for translated books.

"It can be very hard to know whether original English-language material has been translated effectively and accurately into Chinese," he says, adding that the same problem exists for translation into English.

Bourne's team has often encountered scripts translated too literally, and in the most extreme cases, his team had to retranslate books that were previously translated poorly, or do a "double translation" exercise, starting with a native Chinese speaker, followed by polishing by a native English speaker.

"The results can be excellent, but costly, not least because there are very few really good professional translators between our two languages," Bourne says.

Despite these challenges, Littlewood, Johnson, Bourne and Wong look forward to increasing involvement in China's publishing industry, which will receive a boost from the London fair.

"Three days is a short time," Littlewood says. "I don't think people will be leaping up from tables all over the hall saying, 'Done deal. Done deal.' But I think it will start the discussions going, and things could happen in the long term."

He adds: "I think there is not anything that can't be overcome by the sort of contact we're going to have over the next couple of weeks, and what will follow from it."

Contact the writers at cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn and zhangchunyan@chinadaily.com.cn