Zhu Weina, senior project manager with the book fair organizer's Chinese subsidiary Ronbo BolognaFiere Shanghai Ltd, says three works from China won major awards at this year's Bologna fair — "the best performance Chinese original stories have achieved at the book fair in recent years".

"This is an important signal to the world that Chinese original stories are becoming more competitive," she says. "In the past, China was generally seen by industry insiders as a major buyer of content and copyright in the global market. Now that China is growing in content creation, it is attracting more buyers worldwide."

At the Bologna fair, China Science and Technology Press inked cooperation deals with Brazilian and Russian publishing houses to publish 10 sets of Chinese works in their countries.

Praising the way Chinese history is presented in the books and the illustrations, Carlos Eduardo Cavalheiro Filho, chief executive of Bom Bom Book's LTDA of Brazil, says he and his whole team are excited about the cooperation with the Chinese press.

"Many (book) contents we translated are already famous in Brazil," he says. "We're looking forward to publishing these works in Portuguese and selling them in the country."

Slava Fedorov, chief executive of Russia's IRSI Publishing House, says many Russians have a basic understanding of traditional Chinese culture but are not familiar with modern Chinese literature, especially children's literature. "We are just beginning to open this market and introducing modern Chinese literature to Russia, and we see the interest from our readers," he says.

Over 1,400 exhibitors from 90 countries and regions attended the fair, including world-renowned publishers, such as Penguin Random House and HarperCollins Publishers.